POEMS 


AND 


ESSAYS 


BY  ALFRED  HITCH 


GIFT  OF 


/&,/?£/ 


POEMS  AND  ESSAYS 


BY 

ALFRED  HITCH 


PUBLISHED  BY  THE  AUTHOR 
BOX  273,  STOCKTON,  CALIFORNIA 

1920 


Copyright, 

by  Alfred  Hitch 


I  WANT  to  see,  and  feel,  and  know 

Not  only  what  is  well; 
I  ask  not,  coward- like,  to  go 

Blindfolded  down  to  Hell. 

I  ask  for  human  life  and  breath, 
And  pure,  without  alloy, 

Life  with  the  bitterness  of  death, 
With  all  its  grief  and  joy. 


;;  -1    ,  ' 


CONTENTS 
POEMS 

LOVE 

I  Come  to  Thee  23 

When  I  Think  of  Thee  23 

Ulysses  24 

My  Favorite  Poet  24 

The  Faithful  24 

Need  25 

Woman  25 

Weeping  Willow  26 

The  Flower  of  Love  26 

From  Far  Away  26 

The  Wedding  27 

The  Assignation  27 

Nympholepsy  28 

Love  Without  a  Lover  28 

Memoria  29 

Divorced  29 

Married  Love  29 

Love  Triumpant  30 

At  the  Theatre  31 

Surnma  Summarum  31 

Mater  Dolorosa  31 

The  Meaning  of  Love  31 


At  the  Dance 

Procreation  32 

A  Maiden  Mortal  33 

At  the  Ball  33 

Love  and  Friendship  33 

Othello-love  34 

Modern  Love  34 

Her  Father's  Daughter  34 

The  Frailty  of  Love  35 

In  You  35 

The  Parting  36 

Jealousy  36 

Fooled  36 

RELIGION 

At  Church  38 

Sacrifice  38 

The  City  and  Its  God  39 

For  the  Truth  39 

The  Eucharist  39 

The  Myth  of  the  Soul  40 

One  World  at  a  Time  40 

To  a  Christian  41 

Ready-made  Religion  41 

Hell  41 

"The  Scarlet  Letter"  42 

To  a  Christian  Maiden  42 

The  Ordination  42 

Mind  43 

The  Truth  43 

Saint  and  Sinner  43 
Directions  For  Building 


Mortality  44 

Reincarnation  44 

The  One  Thing  Needful  45 

How  Shall  God  Know  His  Owu  ?  45 

Carpe  Diem  45 

The  Individual  46 

God  47 

Fathers  and  Sons  47 

To  Jesus  of  Nazareth  48 

Nativity  Hymn  48 

'Jesus  Wept"  49 

Faith  49 

A  Challenge  49 

Walt  Whitman  or  Christ  ?  50 

"Bishop  Brougham's  Apology '  50 

My  Father  51 

Men  5 1 

A  Devotee  52 

Dies  Irae  52 

Materialism  52 

ANIMAL  LIFE 

Chicago  Stockyards  53 

November  54 

Fear  54 

To  the  Horse  55 

To  an  Elephant  55 

Night  55 

Roosevelt  in  Africa  56 

Quiet  56 

Fishing  57 

Thanksgiving  57 


The  White  Badge  of  Cruelty  58 

Hogs  58 

The  Tyrants  of  the  Earth  59 

Henry  Bergh  59 

The  Praying  Mantis  60 

"And  God  gave  Man  Dominion"  60 

WAR 

1914  61 

Conscripts  62 

The  Casualty  List  62 

The  Soldiery  63 

"Where  is  Thy  Brother  Abel  ?"  63 

The  Voice  of  Our  Age  63 

The  Tragedy  of  the  Young  Men  64 

A  Hero  64 

Religion  in  the  Trenches  65 

Love  and  Loyalty  65 

A  Suggestion  of  the  Devil  65 

Crime  and  Punishment  66 

To  the  German  Emperor  66 

Advice  to  a  Soldier  66 

Militarism  67 

The  Triumph  of  Mind  67 

The  Price  of  Valor  67 

The  Conquered  Country  68 

MISCELLANEOUS 

The  New  World  69 

Wheels  69 

The  City  of  Unrest  70 

To  the  Sphinx  70 


At  the  Inn  of  Life  71 

Agreed  71 

Spring  72 

A  Face  in  the  Glass  72 

To  a  Butterfly  72 

To  a  Field  of  Celery  73 

Hirelings  73 

The  Great  Divide  73 

To  a  Boy  74 

An  Autumn  Thought  74 

Instability  74 

To  Double  Roses  75 

To  a  Reformer  75 

Sleep  75 

Lex  Scripta  76 

Dispossessed  76 

Ex  Parte  76 

The  Wreck  of  the  Titanic  77 

At  a  Social  Reception  77 

Gold  77 

Alter  Ego  78 

The  Overland  Limited  78 

The  White  Lights  78 

Of  My  Brothers  79 

The  Emergence  of  Man  79 

To  the  Indian  Pipe  79 

A  Merry  Go-round  80 

Lost  Days  80 

In  the  City  8 1 

The  Dream  Si 

Vanitas  Vanitatum  82 


To  the  Sea  82 

From  a  Car-window  83 

Nature  83 

My  Heart  and  I  84 

Sunday  Evening  84 

Wander  Song  85 

Hypersensitive  85 

The  Unattainable  86 

Alone  86 

To  a  Baby  86 

In  the  Slums  87 

Tobacco  Smoke  87 
In  Extremis 
Between  the  Bays 

A  Toiler's  Conscience  89 

The  Aeroplane  89 

Blood  89 

The  Beggar  9° 

A  House  Divided  Against  Itself  9° 

Whip-poor-will  9° 

Water  on  the  Desert  91 

To  a  Pine  Tree  91 

When  Thou  art  Old  92 

Old  Age  9 2 

Spectres  93 

Empty  Bottles  93 

God  Said  93 

Rockaby  Baby  94 

Microbes  95 

Like  a  Flower  95 

An  Invocation  to  Paternity  96 


The  Black  Side  96 

Revenge  97 

John  Doe  and  Richard  Roe  97 

Knights-errant  97 

The  Vagabond  98 

From  the  Outside  98 

Streets  99 

Beauty  99 

Wealth  and  Poverty  100 

The  Hardest  Thing  in  the  World  to  Do  100 

A  Friend  100 

The  Laborer  IGI 

Master  and  Servant  101 

Wanderlust  102 

Loneliness  102 

Impasse  102 

The  Return  103 

Desire  103 

The  Masquerade  103 

At  the  Road's  Hud  104 

Flowers  104 

My  Lost  Ideal  105 

Through  Life   by  Train  105 

The  Deserted  House  106 

A  Birth  106 

Death,  the  Inquisitor  106 

Vain  Advice  107 

Imagination  107 

Science  107 

A  Camp-meeting  Promenade  108 

Limitations  108 


Alfalfa  109 

Thoughts  no 

Beauty  and  Distance  no 

Tenants  no 

The  Sisters  of  Mercy  in 

The  Child-king  in 

"The  Female  of  the  Species"  112 

The  Answer  112 

Brothers  113 

Liberty  113 

To  Know  and  Not  to  Know  113 

The  Unpardonable  Sin  113 

Forsythia  and  Daffodils  114 

The  Mountain  Trail  115 

The  Rocky  Mountain  Columbine  116 

To  the  California  Poppy  116 

Coyote  1 1 6 

Cause  and  Effect  1 17 

The  Wanderer  1 17 

Elizabeth  1 17 

Nocturne  117 

W.  C.  T.  U.  1 18 

An  Epitaph  1 1 8 

The  Drunkard's  Toast  119 

The  Course  of  Empire  119 

PERSONAL 

To  Swinburne  i  20 

To  George  Sterling  i  20 

To  Rudyard  Kipling  121 

To  Dante  121 


G.  K.  Chesterton  122 

To  F.  W.  H.  Myers  122 

Shakespeare  and  the  Baconians  123 

Annie  Besant  123 

John  Brown  123 

Keats  1 24 

Izaak  Walton  124 

To  Joyce  Kilmer  125 

To  Father  Tabb  125 

Thoreau  at  Walden  126 

To  Eugene  V.  Debs  126 

Ave  et  Vale  127 

The  Iliad  127 

At  the  Sign  of  the  Lyre  128 

Open  House  128 

The  Dead  Boss  129 

Sold  1 30 

PLACE 

Spring  in  Delaware  131 

San  Francisco  132 

California  132 

Days  on  Puget  Sound  132 

Mojave  Hills  133 

Chicago  133 

The  Desert:  Nevada  134 

Casa  Grande  134 

The  Seven  Cities  of  Cibola  135 

Sunset  in  Arizona  135 

The  Desert:  Arizona  136 

An  Arizona  Toast  n6 


Romance  in  Californina  137 

ESSAYS 

Protoplasm  and  Consciousness  141 

Morality  and  Consciousness  141 

Creation  and  Consciousness  142 

The  Hunter-Sportsman  143 

Love  and  Hate  143 

Matter  M4 

Patriotism  145 

True  Greatness  i.;6 

Democracy  and  Autocracy  147 

Notes  on  Nietzsche  i-j8 

"Man,  the  Erect"  153 

Carlyle  and  Hero-worship  154 

The  Great  Mystery  155 

Studies  in  Irrationality  155 

Caveat  Emptor  156 

Beauty  and  Pleasure  156 

Life  157 

Food,  Clothing,  and  Shelter  157 

Nature  158 

Pragmatism  and  Truth  159 

Reason  and  Desire  164 

The  Mortality  of  the  Ego  165 

Religion  and  Woman  167 

Optimism  167 

The  Vital  Element  in  Religion  168 

Trees  and  Ideas  169 

Religion  and  Morality  169 


Christ  and  Conventional  Religion  170 

Creation  and  Evolution  173 

"The  Rest  is  Silence"  173 

The  Hope  of  the  World  174 

Intolerance  175 

"The  Fear  of  God"  176 

Skepticism  176 

A  Democracy  Afraid  of  Itself  177 

The  Human  Revolt  178 

Imagination  and  Desire  178 

The  Supernatural  179 

A  Metaphysical  Dream  179 

Health  and  Deceit  179 

Poetry  180 

In  My  Garden  180 

A  Plea  for  the  Worst  Books  181 

Poets,  Past  and  Present  181 

Working  for  Wages  182 

The  Reformer  182 

The  Cigar-hero  183 

The  Penitentiary  183 

Marriage  184 

Explanation  184 

WAR  NOTES 

War  and  Consciousness  185 

Arms  and  the  Fool  187 

The  Weakness  of  Force  188 

Preparedness  188 

What  the  War  Teaches  189 

1919  190 

DEFINITION  AND  SUGGESTION  191 


POEMS 


LOVE 


I  COME  TO  THEE 

I  COMK  to  thee  with  the  yearning 
Of  a  thousand  million  loves, 

Out  of  the  infinite  loving 
Of  life  and  all  that  moves. 

I  come  to  thee  as  the  pollen 
The  light  winds  lift  and  blow 

Comes  to  the  waiting  flower- 
O  welcome  me  so  ! 


WHEN  I  THINK  OF  THEE 

WHEN  I  think  of  thee, 

I  wonder  why  men  ever  tire  of  love 

And  why  they  ever  struggle  to  get  free  ? 

I'd  go  triumphantly  to  be  thy  slave 

And  find  it  sweet  to  die  murdered  by  thee. 


24 LOVE 

ULYSSES 

ULYSSKS,  noted  for  his  wisdom, 

Sailing  home  from  Troy, 
Saw  the  sirens,  Love  and  Beauty, 

Heard  them  sing  of  joy; 

But  he  stopped  not  for  their  singing, 

Nor  for  pleading  eyes, 
Sailed  right  on  and  so  escaped 

Death,  but  was  he  wise  ? 

MY  FAVORITE  POET 

SINCE  she  read  the  cherished  volume 
Of  my  favorite  English  poet, 

More  than  ever  it  is  dear. 
As  she  read  the  verses  over, 
Did  she  think  of  me,  I  wonder, 

As  I  read  and  think  of  her  ? 

THE  FAITHFUL 

As  the  kneeling  Mussulman 

To  Mecca  turns  to  pray, 
So  my  heart,  dear,  turns  to  thee 

And  never  turns  away. 


I.OVK 25 

NEED 


YOUR  need  should  be  my  will 

And  make  me  strong 
To  master  every  ill 

All  the  day  long. 

/  need  your  need  of  me,  darling , 
/  need  your  need  of  me. 

Your  need  should  be  the  spur 

To  life  in  me, 
And  so  help  me  conquer 

The  world  for  thee. 

/  need  your  need  of  me,  darling, 
I  need  your  need  of  me. 


WOMAN 

HK  has  no  home  who  has  no  wife, 

For  woman  is  the  home  of  man. 

There's  no  one  else  to  love  him, 

No  one  else  that  can; 

Only  woman  shares  his  life, 

Only  woman  knows; 

He  came  from  woman  and  to  woman  goes. 


26 


WEEPING 


I  WOULD  I  were  a  willow,  planted 

My  lady's  grave  above, 
Slow  -growing  through  the  years,  outlasting 

The  mein'ry  of  our  love. 

I'd  grow  down  in  the  earth  to  find  her, 

The  love  love  could  not  save, 
And  wind  my  rooty  arms  around  her 

And  weep  above  her  grave. 


THE  FLOWER  OF  LOVE 

PAST  love  hath  blossomed,  maid,  in  thee, 

Love  red  with  crime 

And  white  with  jealousy 

And  dreamy-eyed  with  memories,  — 

Thou  flower  of  the  centuries 

And  fruit  of  time. 


FROM  FAR  AWAY 

As  I  walked  the  streets  of  this  distant  city, 
I  have  missed  thee  from  my  side  all  day; 

And  now  darkness  falls  over  land  and  sea- 
I  love  thee  in  dreams  and  far  away. 


LOVE'  

THE  WEDDING 

ONLY  a  year  ago  he  died, 

And  today  she  weds  again. 
His  children  lead  the  bridal  march — 

His  children — 

The  wedding  bells  in  the  church  ring  out 
Over  the  grave  where  her  husband  lies, 

But  there's  no  protest  from  the  dead, 
From  the  grave  he  does  not  rise. 

"Speak  now  or  forever  hold  your  peace," 
And  the  dead  man  does  not  rise.. 

Only  a  year  ago,  and  today 

To  another  man  his  wife  is  wed. 

If  he  were  not  dead,  he  now  would  die 

Ay,  surely  he  is  dead. 


THE  ASSIGNATION 

WE  met  as  shadows  in  the  dark 

To  purposeless  and  half-thought  deed; 

Yet  lo  !  the  night  rang  out  with  it 

And  woke  the  startled  day 

And  echoes  of  eternity. 


LOVB 


NYMPHOLEPSY 

THE  face  of  a  maiden  seen  in  the  street, 
It  haunts  me  wherever  I  go; 

We  never  met  and  shall  never  meet, 
And  it  was  years  and  years  ago. 

And  was  she  beautiful  ?     I  do  not  know 
I  know  that  she  looked  at  me 

And  I  looked  into  her  eyes,  and  O  ! 
All  else  seemed  but  as  vanity. 

I  walk  the  streets  when  the  day  is  done 
And  watch  the  faces  go  by  — 

A  thousand  faces,  but  never  the  one 
For  which  I  pine  and  die. 


LOVE  WITHOUT  A  LOVER 

To  love  without  a  lover, 

How  dull  the  days  go  by, 
The  days  that  bring  him  never, 

The  nights  that  wait  and  sigh. 

If  you  should  see  my  lover, 

O  little  birds  that  fly, 
Tell  him  the  years  are  passkig, 

Tell  him  I  fade  and  die. 


LOVE       29 

MEMORIA 


YEARS  come  and  go,  still  bringing 
New  fashions  and  new  themes, 

But  she  forever  reigneth 

Queen  of  my  heart  and  dreams. 

As  perfume  of  dead  roses 
Shut  in  old  books  of  rhyme, 

She  lives  in  memory  only, 
Beyond  the  reach  of  time. 


DIVORCED 

DIVORCED  from  husband  and  wife, 
But  not  from  father  and  mother; 
In  your  children  ye  shall  go 
Down  the  centuries  together. 


MARRIED  LOVE 

WHEN  deepened  and  confined, 

The  wide  and  shallow  stream  that  runs  to  waste 

Is  turned  into  a  torrent,  so  love, 

Confined  within  the  channel  of  our  lives, 

Conserves  its  strength  and  passion  through  the  years. 


LOVE  TRIUMPHANT 

THK  world  grows  chill  and  overcast  — 

Hold  me  fast,  Love,  hold  me  fast  ! 

Say  not  farewell,  but  hold  me  fast 
Lest  Death  be  lord  of  love  at  last — 
Hold  me  fast,  Love,  hold  me  fast ! 

The  ground  is  frozen  hard,  and  white — 
Hold  me  tight,  Love,  hold  me  tight  !  — 

The  wind  is  howling  through  the  night; 

Thou  art  fading  from  my\  sight 

Hold  me  tight,  Love,  hold  me  tight  ! 

I  know  that  in  the  coffin-chest 

Hold  me,  press  me  to  thy  breast  ! 

I  can  never,  never  rest 

Except  thoti  fold  me  to  thy  breast 

Clasp  me,  fold  me  to  thy  breast  ! 

The  world  grows  chill  and  overcast 

Hold  me  fast,  Love,  hold  me  fast  ! 

Say  not  farewell,  but  hold  me  fast 
J^est  Death  be  lord  of  love  at  last — 
Hold  me  fast,  Love,  hold  me  fast  ! 


AT  THE  THEATRE 

the  world  in  audience  met, 
As  Carmen  or  as  Juliet, 
You  play  a  part  and  seem  to  be  — 
But  be  your  own  dear  self  to  me. 


SUMMA  SUMMARUM 

UPON  the  earth  that  holds  thee  now, 

Or  in  the  Heaven  above, 
There's  naught  so  beautiful  as  thou 

And  naught  so  sweet  as  love. 


MATER  DOIX>ROSA 

THE  girlish  dream  of  happiness 
In  wife  and  mother  dies, 

For  love  begins  in  selfishness 
And  ends  in  sacrifice. 


THE  MEANING  OF  LOVE 

OUR  love,  dear,  for  each  other  is  a  child 
That  will  care  nothing  for  us. 


32    LOVE 

AT  THE  DANCE 

THE  sexual  organs  of  the  tulip  tree 
She  has  pinned  to  her  maidenly  breast; 

Their  heavy  perfume  pervades  the  room 
And  fills  the  soul  with  unrest. 

The  delicate  arms  and  heaving  chest, 

Plump  shoulders  bare  to  the  waist, 
For  a  moment  are  pressed  to  the  manly  breast, 

Then  swung  for  others  to  taste. 

She  would  barely  speak  should  we  meet  on  the  street 

When  tomorrow's  sunlight  gleams; 
But  tonight  I  can  clasp  her  in  a  lover's  grasp, 

And  clasp  her  still  in  my  dreams. 


PROCREATION 

FROM  the  sexual  embrace  of  the  night, 

Each  morning  I  arise  immortal. 

This  is  the  perpetual  fountain  of  youth, 

"The  resurrection  of  the  body  and  life  everlasting.' 

It  paints  the  plumage  and  tints  the  petal 
And  fills  the  world  with  its  fragrance, 
The  blossoms,  the  flowers,  are  sexual,  sensual, 
AH  pale  with  passion  or  blushing  with  love. 


I,OVH 


A  MAIDEN  MORTAL 

I  woui,D  not  court  the  lily, 

Nor  see  an  angel  home; 
Let  flowers  wed  with  flowers 

And  Heaven  keep  her  own. 

I  love  a  maiden  mortal, 
Eve's  latest  daughter, 

With  all  her  mother's  sin; 
I  love  her  faults  and  follies, 
Her  pimples  and  her  freckles, 

The  mole  upon  her  chin. 


AT  THE  BALL 

WHAT  means  the  rose  in  thy  attire 
Are  roses,  dear,  the  fashion  —  - 

Flame-colored  petals  of  desire, 
Red  riot  of  passion  ? 


LOVE  AND  FRIENDSHIP 

IT  was  not  love,  he  asked,  but  friendship, 
And  so  went  lonely  to  the  end; 

For  one  may  have  a  dozen  lovers 
And  not  a  single  friend. 


34  LOVE 

OTHELLO-LOVE 

FAI<SE  to  thee  ?      Ah,  vain  Moor  ! 

The  question  is  not  whether  she  were  false  to  thee. 

But  whether  she  were  true  unto  herself. 

And  jealousy's  not  murder;  one  may  be  jealous 
And  still  not  be  a  murderer. 

There  are  whose  very  love  is  criminal — 
Othello-love,  that  kisses  and  then  kills. 

MODERN  LOVE 

ALTHOUGH  she  left  me  for  a  greater  love, 

And  though  my  life  went  out  with  her, 

I  opened  wide  the  door 

And  blessed  her  ere  she  went. 

Love  shall  not  make 

Me  tyrant  or  a  murderer. 

I  want  no  love  that  is  not  free  to  love. 

HER  FATHER'S  DAUGHTER 

I'D  HAVE  thee,  dear,  all  woman; 
I  speak  of  love,  but  falter  when — 
When  your  dead  father  looks  at  me 
Out  of  your  eyes. 


LOVB 35 

THE  FRAILTY  OF  LOVE 

LOVE  is  as  frail  as  sweet, 

Delicately  agile; 
The  lily  on  its  stalk 

Is  not  more  fragile. 

'Tis  the  slight  spirit  of  dreams — 

Ah,  who  can  grasp  it  ? 
No  fleshly  lip  can  kiss 

Nor  arm  can  clasp  it. 

Love  is  too  frail  for  work 

And  rough  endeavor. 
Sighing,  bid  love  adieu, 

'Tis  thine  forever. 


IN  YOU 

IN  you, 

Life  hath  clothed  herself  in  beauty, 

Desire  hath  grown  to  love  — 

O  daughter  of  the  past  and  mother  of  the  future  ! 


IvOVE 


.,   THE  PARTING 

LOVK  is  no  more  a  child 

And  we  no  more  are  children; 

The  love  our  youth  beguiled 

Suits  not  the  man  and  woman. 

Once  we  could  agree, 

But  time  hath  made  us  strangers; 

Alas  !  for  you  and  me 

The  dream  of  youth  is  over. 

'Tis  time  to  say  good-by, 

And  now,  before  we  cry, 

Good-by,  good-by  forever. 


JEALOUSY 

BY  the  love  she  hath  for  thee, 
She  can  love  some  other  man. 

As  rare  things  come  packed  carefully, 
So  love  comes  wrapped  in  jealousy. 


FOOLED 

WE  marry  for  love  and  live  —  for  children. 
Nature,  to  get  her  work  done,  how  she  fools  us 


RELIGrON 


I  have  no  heart  to  preach,  or  teach, 

Or  argue  my  belief-, 
I  woidd  not  change  a  single  thought 

Nor  break  a  single  leaf. 

I  only  write  as  friend  to  friend, 

As  one  in  foreign  land 
Writes  to  a  friend  across  the 

That  h*  may  understand. 


3,9 REUGION 

AT  CHURCH 

THE  sabbath  comes  at  length, 
The  church-bells  ring  the  date, 
And  thitherward  repair 
The  young  men  in  their  strength, 
The  maidens,  slim  and  fair, 
And  old  folk,  scant  of  breath, — 
All  seeking  respite  from  the  fate 
That  threatens  everywhere, 
The  tragedy  of  life  and  death, 
Around,  beneath,  and  overhead; 

And  let  us  leave  them  there 

The  living  praying  to  the  dead. 

SACRIFICE 

MEN  came  to  sacrifice  to  God. 
Some  brought  the  gift  of  other  lives, 
Dumb,  helpless  cattle,  children,  wives, 
And  some,  ill  passions  and  desires, 
And  gave  to  sacrificial  fires; 
But  no  one  brought  his  soul,  none  gave 
Himself.     God  answered  from  the  grave: 
"Ah,  vain  the  gifts  your  fears  devise 

To  cheat  the  purpose  in  ye  furled 

Yourselves  shall  be  the  sacrifice 
Upon  the  altar  of  the  world. ' ' 


REUGION 


THE  CITY  AND  ITS  GOD 

BROADWAY — 

Saint  Paul's  and  Trinity. 

O  city  loud  with  strife, 

Is  this  thy  God, 

The  troubled,  pale,  ascetic  Christ, 

Who  entered  not  the  lists  of  life, 

But  turned  aside 

To  muse  on  death  and  destiny  ? 

O  city  of  industry, 

Is  this  thy  God  ? 


FOR  THE  TRUTH 

THOUGH  God  himself  a  devil  were 
And  Truth  itself  should  die  of  fear, 
Still  I'd  brave  Hell  and  shout  and  roar, 
The  Truth ,  the  7 ruth  forevermore  \ 


THE  EUCHARIST 

THE  snowy  altar  cloth  is  laid,  and  thereupon 
The  feast  of  Christ  is  spread  with  benediction, 

But  I 1  have  no  appetite  for  Christian  food, 

For  bread  that  tastes  of  i'Jesh  and  wine  that  tastes  of 

blood. 


40  RELIGION 

-     -        ~.          ———.^— •—•——— —^^—^—•—— ™—™^^    ————— ^-^.^.^B.^^^^^^^^..^^.^^.^^^.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

THE  MYTH  OF  THE  SOUL 

« 

A  WINGED  Thought  of  Desire, 
Fast  hid  in  a  cell  of  the  brain, 

Till  the  cell  is  crumbled  to  dust, 
When  it  flies  on  its  way  again. 

It  comes  as  a  dream  in  the  night 
And  goes  as  a  thought  of  Say, 

Invisible,  impalpable,  known 
In  no  conceivable  way. 

And  this  is  the  myth  of  the  soul 
That  flatters  the  human  ear. 

'Tis  as  old  as  man  and  will  last 
As  long  as  desire  and  fear. 

ONE  WORLD  AT  A  TIME 

THE  Church  it  holds  for  future  use 

The  present  and  the  real; 
And  while  the  Christian  kneels  in  prayer 

The  thieves  break  through  and  steal. 

Cet's  live  today  and  for  today, 

Live  for  our  country  and  our  homes; 

And  if  tomorrow  comes,  why,  then 
We'll  live  tomorrow — when  it  comes. 


RELIGION 41 

TO  A  CHRISTIAN 

You  say,  O  friend,  that  God  is  love, 

But  when  you  turn  and  kneel, 
'Tis  not  to  love,  but  tyranny, 

That  you  make  your  appeal. 

Praise  God  for  favors  past,  you  sing, 

And  those  to  be  received; 
Praise  for  reward  is  flattery, 

And  can  God  be  deceived  ? 

READY-MADE  RELIGION 

MEN  buy  religion  as  they  buy 
Their  clothing,  ready-made; 
But  they  were  naked  else, 
Soul-naked,  shivering  and  afraid. 
Then  let  them  buy  cheap  clothing 
For  cheap  souls. 

HELL 

IF  men  of  every  age  and  race 
Could  come  together  in  one  place, 
Mediaeval,  modern — well, 
They'd  need  no  fire  to  make  it  HeU. 


43  RELIGION 


"THE  SCARLET  LETTER" 

THE  law  made  sacred  grew  a  sin 
To  plague  and  torture  Hester  Prynne; 
Virtue  itself  became  a  crime 
By  making  it  holy  and  divine. 

Zealots  hafm  more  than  ribalds  can, 
For  Virtue  turned  a  Puritan 
And  hardened  into  cruelty 
Drives  us  to  hate  morality. 

O  worship,  sacredness,  divinity — 
The  cardinal  sins  of  Christianity  ! 


TO  A  CHRISTIAN  MAIDEN 

YE  meet  in  secret  prayer,  enticed 

By  love  of  the  divine, 
Spouse  of  thy  lord,  the  Jesus  Christ 

My  Jove  would  be  a  crime. 

THE  ORDINATION 

THE  Church  has  gained  a  priest  to 
Live  on  the  Christian  plan; 

•  * 

The  maid  has  lost  a  lover 
And  life  has  lost  a  man. 


RELIGION  43 


MIND 

is  no  trace  of  God  as  mind 
In  all  creation's  laws; 
Mind  is  the  long  result  of  life, 
And  not  its  moving  cause. 

Born  to  the  freedom  of  the  earth, 
And  men  without  a  peer, 

We  make  us  gods  of  lesser  things 
To  worship  and  to  fear. 


THE  TRUTH 

No  opium-dream  of  faith  for  me; 
I  will  not  drug  my  soul  with  faith  nor  be 
A  coward  to  the  truth.     But  give  me  life 
And  the  religion  of  the  brave,  the  Truth- 
The  Truth,  although  it  be  a  sword 
And  I  die  on  the  point ! 


SAINT  AND  SINNER 

EACH  hold  the  laws  of  life  as  naught 

But  human  vanities, 
The  saint,  the  sinner, — the  poles  of  thought. 

The  two  insanities. 


RELIGION 


DIRECTIONS  FOR  BUILDING 

BUILD  the  houvse  of  life 
On  the  Rock  of  Fact, 
The  foundation  stone 
Of  the  universe. 

Who  builds  on  faith 
Builds  castles  in  the  air. 


MORTALITY 

goes  weeping  to  the  grave; 
Without  death,  where  would  the  pathos  be 
Mortality  gives  significance  to  life 
And  makes  the  hours  precious; 
It  gives  us  sympathy  for  suffering 
And  relief  in  tears. 
Who  goes  with  me  to  death  ? 


REINCARNATION 

Ay,  we  shall  be  made  flesh  again 
In  lives  and  ways  not  now  believed; 

As  mice  we  shall  come  back  at  night 
And  hannt  the  houses  where  we  lived. 


RELIGION  45 


THE  ONE  THING  NEEDFUL 

THE  preacher  prays  God  for  ali  things, 
From  sinners  saved  to  napkin-rings; 
But  strange,  of  all  his  wants  immense, 
He  never  prays  for  common -sense. 

This  one  thing  needful  could  we  share, 
There 'd  be  no  use  for  further  prayer, 
And  Hell  would  lose  and  Heaven  win, 
For  want  of  common -sense  we  sin. 


HOW  SHALL  GOD  KNOW  HIS  OWN? 

THE  man  that  suffered  on  the  rack 

And  he  that  bound  him  down, 
Each  followed  duty  and  the  right-—     <i »  ^ 

How  shall  God  know  his  own  ? 


CARPE  DIEM 

WE  have  learned  that  in  death  there's  no  waking, 

So  in  life  there  shall  be  no  eleep; 
We  will  live  life  out  in  the  living 

And  in  death  have  nothing  to  weep. 


$6  RELIGION 


THE  INDIVIDUAL 

THUS  cries  the  individual 
In  his  atomic  sorrow, 

Foreseeing  his  decay: 
"I  want  to  live  forever, 
And  if  I  die  tomorrow, 

Why  live  a  single  day?" 

Desire  is  the  unconscious 
Law  of  force  and  matter 

In  all  that  creep  and  crawl. 
Wert  thou  not  filled  with  longing 
To  live  and  live  forever, 

Thou  wouldst  not  live  at  all. 

The  earth  was  old  with  aeons 
When  thou  wert  young  beside  thee 

Warm  Mesozoic  sea; 
And  still  the  aeons  crumble 
And  still  thou  art  immortal 

In  thy  mortality. 

Life's  infinite  progression, 

And  through  rebirth  and  shifting 

Evolves  the  greater  mind; 
So  thou  must  live  and  perish 
That  thou  mayst  live  more  grandly 

In  lives  thou  leav'st  behind. 


RELIGION  47 


Still  cries  the  individual 
In  his  atomic  sorrow: 

"The  thought  that  I  must  die 
O'er-balances  all  others; 
'Tis  I  would  live  forever, 

'Tis  I,  and  I,  and  I  !" 


GOD 

GOD  is  neither  love  nor  hate — 
God  is  Fate. 

Beyond  our  joy  and  grieving, 
Beyond  our  prayer  and  praising, 
He  evermore  abides; 
God  of  the  good  and  evil, 
God  of  the  Turk  and  Christian- 
He  never  taketh  sides. 


FATHERS  AND  SONS 

day  our  parents  died,  we  buried  their  lives  with 

them, 

And  broke  their  household  gods  and  set  up  to  be  men; 
Yet  still  for  us,  for  whom  they  once  did  toil  and  save, 
Dead  faces  look  reproach  and  hands  reach  from  the 

grave. 


48  RELIGION 

TO  JESUS  OF  NAZARETH 

THOU  lonely  one,  the  eternal  outcast  of  mankind — 

Killed  for  a  man  and  worshiped  for  a  God. 

Lonely  thou  didst  live  and  lonely  die, 

And  lonelier  still  thy  state,  if  thou  couldst  know, 

For  the  unintelligent  praise  of  men 

Hurts  worse  than  their  senseless  scorn. 

Christ,  it  must  be  lonely  to  be  worshiped ! 

Thou  wert  man  and  touched  with  race, 
And  still  men  crucify  thee  in  thy  race, 
Still  crucify  thee  every  day  anew, 
Even  they,  thy  worshipers. 
Christ,  it  must  be  lonely  to  be  worshiped  ! 

NATIVITY  HYMN     - 

IN  thee,  O  new-born  child,  I  see 
Man's  immortality 
New-risen  from  the  bath  of  birth 
And  savior  of  the  earth. 

This  is  that  natal  morn 
The  wise  men  sought  afar. 
Behold  !  the  night  is  vanquished 
And  in  the  east  a  star. 

Unto  us  a  child  is  born 

And  Christ  is  risen  from  the  dead. 


RELIGION  49 


"JESUS  WEPT" 

WHAT  we  love  and  comprehend 
Is  not  the  Christ,  but  weeping  friend, 
Not  that  Lazarus  who  slept 
Awoke,  but  this,  that  "Jesus  wept. 


i  > 


And  still  death  takes  the  fair  and  brave 
I  weep  with  Jesus  at  the  grave. 


FAITH 

"WHY  faith  when  we  have  reason  ?" 
And  Religion,  a  woman  dressed  in  mourning,  replied: 
'To  believe  that  God  is  good,  in  man  and  immortality, 
We  need  faith." 
Ay,  we  need  faith  indeed  ! 


A  CHALLENGE    , 

BY  nineteen  centuries  of  war  and  hate, 
Where  is  thy  boasted  Jove  of  neighbor,  Rome  ? 
By  all  the  hungry  thousands  on  the  streets, 
Where  is  thy  self-denial,  O  Christendom  ? 


50  RSUGION 


WALT  WHITMAN  OR  CHRIST  ? 

CHRIST  preached  the  life  to  come,  not  life; 
Heaven,  not  the  world;  the  ideal,  not  the  real. 

H  e  disbelieved  in  life  and  gave  his  life  to  save  it 

O  noble  unbeliever  ! 

Whitman  believed  in  life, 

Not  merely  this  life  or  that  life, 

Not  merely  my  life  or  thy  life,  but  life  \ — 

Life  without  qualification  or  limitation, 

Without  addition  or  elimination — life  ! 

O  Whitman,  the  supreme  and  profound  believer  in  life! 

Dost  thou  believe  in  life  with  Whitman 
Or  disbelieve  with  Christ  ?  Dost  thou  believe  in  life? — 
Life  carnivorous,  omnivorous  ?  its  evil  and  its  good  ? 
The  saint,  the  sinner?  the  murderer  and  the  murdered? 
Dost  thou  believe  in  life  ? 


"BISHOP  BROUGHAM'S  APOLOGY' 

O  MERCENARY,  doubting  bishop,  ye 
Argue  that  the  Church  stands  equally 
For  the  believer  and  the  doubter;  truer 
But  not  the  disbeliever,  add  thereto. 


RELIGION  51 


MY  FATHER 

MY  father  was  a  Roundhead  captain, 
Of  serious  thought  and  surly  mien. 

For  him,  there  was  no  chance  or  happen 
And  no  expedient,  I  ween. 

He  could  not  put  by  wrong  and  sorrow, 
Make  merry  in  the  House  of  Death; 

He  felt  the  shadow  of  tomorrow 
In  slower  pulse  and  shorter  breath. 

He  hated  as  he  loved  and  evil 

Knew  the  tremendous  blows  he  dealt. 

He  could  not  be  both  plain  and  civil, 
But  spake  the  hot  words  that  he  felt. 

He  was  a  worker  and  a  faster, 

Who  thought  it  sin  to  loaf  or  play; 

No  silly  clown  was  he  or  jester, 
No  masquer  at  life's  holiday. 


MEN 

'WE'RE  men,  and  boast  our  manhood.'    Ay, forsooth, 
Men  enough  to  war  and  will, 
Men  enough  to  fight  and  kill; 
But  are  ye  men  enough  to  know  the  truth  ? 


52  _  RELIGION  _ 

A  DEVOTEE 

SHE  reads  and  prays  in  reverence  and  devotion  pale, 
For  long  disease  hath  left  her  sallow  features,  body 

frail; 

Yet  sorrow  hath  its  recompense,  and  she  doth  gain 
A  sweet  seraphic  peace,  renouncing  joy,  resigned  to 

pain. 

She  hath  the  calm  and  patience  of  infinitude 
And  moves  as  though  she  were  immortal.      Nothing 

can  intrude 

Upon  the  still  life  of  the  soul  that's  here  interred  — 
The  passions  of  the  world,  like  winds  in  distant  forests, 

heard. 


DIES 


WHEN  the  accusing  faces  of  his  creatures 
Shall  stand  before  God  in  judgment, 
Heaven  and  earth  shall  be  no  more 
And  God  himself  shall  flee,  a  shrieking  maniac, 
Into  the  night  of  eternity  ! 

MATERIALISM 

WE  are  all  materialists, 

For  we  must  be  materialists  to  live; 

And  what  is  spirit  but  the  ghost  of  matter  ? 


ANIMAL  LIFE 


CHICAGO  STOCKYARDS 


life  is  driv'n  to  slaughter 
And  dies  without  a  tear; 
Cain  kills  his  brother  Abel 
And  there  is  none  to  hear. 

I  think  with  Machavelli, 

Amid  the  bloody  reek, 
That  might,  not  right,  is  final. 

"  'Tis  miser'ble  to  be  weak." 

And  still  they  come  by  thousands, 
The  helpless  forms  of  life, 

And  in  their  throats  he  plunges 
The  sharp  two-edged  knife. 

His  flesh  and  blood  relation 

He  murders  in  a  trice 
That  men  may  live  upon  them  —  - 

Say,  is  life  worth  the  price  ? 


54  ANIMAL 


NOVEMBER 

NOVEMBER  comes  in  sullen  mood 

And  takes  from  life  its  green  defense; 

And  now  begins,  in  field  and  wood, 
"The  slaughter  of  the  inciocents." 

Man  feels  the  savage  in  him  stir, 
An  instinct  deeper  than  his  race, 

Impels  him  forth  to  run  with  hounds 
And  follow  in  the  cruel  chase. 

Man,  ere  he  had  to  manhood  grown, 
Ere  he  had  learnt  to  build  and  plow, 

Took  other  life  to  save  his  own 
And  lived  upon  the  hunt,but  now 

No  longer  hunts  for  food  or  place, 
Yet  with  his  dog  he  follows  still 

The  fierce  excitement  of  the  chase, 
The  bloody  pleasure  of  the  kill. 

FEAR 

FEAR  gave  the  antelope  its  speed, 

The  bird  its  wings, 
And  half  the  world  is  saved  by  flight 

And  fear  of  things. 


ANIMAL  UPB  55 


TO  THE  HORSE 

THY  harnessed  strength,  strength  shod  with  speed, 

Is  slave  to  man's  desire  and  need, 

And,  wanting  thee,  we  still  had  been 

A  forest  savage  clothed  in  skin. 

Thy  harnessed  strength  has  been  our  strength, 

This  strength  has  made  us  gods  at  length, 

But  what  to  thee  thy  workmanship, 

Still  pulling  thy  load  beneath  the  whip  ? 

TO  AN  ELEPHANT 

How  strange  thou  seemest  to  our  eyes, 
Amorphous,  cumbrous,  monstrous  size, 
A  mountain  of  flesh  from  tropic  palms, 
With  scent  of  saiidalwood  and  balms; 
And  sad  thou  art,  in  mien  and  inood, 
With  sorrows  older  than  the  flood. 

NIGHT 

THE  strong  were  the  lords  of  the  day, 

So  the  weak,  they  hid  in  the  night, 

But  the  strong,  they  tracked  and  pursued  them, 

Pursued  them  into  the  night; 

And  deeds  of  terror  are  done  there, 

Under  the  cover  of  darkness, 

Under  the  shadow  of  night. 


56  ANIMAL 


ROOSEVEI/T  IN  AFRICA 

THK  primal  instincts  of  a  race 
That  lived  upon  the  cruel  chase, 
The  lust  for  blood,  the  greed  for  spoil, 
Have  made  a  joy  of  arduous  toil 
That  builds  not,  lifts  not,  but  destroys, 
Unthinking  as  an  idle  boy's. 

i 

God  hath  no  favorites  in  his  plan, 
But  all  are  equal,  beast  and  man, 
The  beast  that  dies,  the  man  that  slays, 
Both  struggling  in  the  path  of  days, 
The  beast  that  kills  to  live  and  feast, 
The  man  because  he  once  was  beast. 


QUIET 

THOUGH  quiet  are  the  fields  and  woods, 
'Tis  not  the  quiet  of  peace  that's  there, 

Where  the  rabbit  lives  by  stealth 
And  the  red  fox  has  his  lair. 

There  is  blood  upon  the  fern, 
Bones  a-bleaching  on  the  hill, 

Where  the  hunt  was  yesterday 
And  the  red  fox  had  his  fill. 


ANIMAI,  UPE  57 


FISHING 

O  SWEET  and  cool  is  the  summer  breeze 

Over  the  morning  bay  ! 
A  push  from  shore  and  a  pull  at  the  oars, 

And  we  are  off  for  fishing  today. 

A  jerk  on  the  line,  a  flash  in  the  air — 

"A  bite  !"     But  O  the  pain 
Of  a  floundering,  dying  fish  in  the  boat 

Gasping  for  breath  in  vain  ! 

From  its  humid,  bulging  eyes, 

What  a  human,  pitiful  look  ! 
'Tis  life  !  O  God  !  'tis  I  myself 

Impaled  on  the  end  of  a  hook  ! 

O  cool  and  sweet  is  the  summer  breeze 

Over  the  morning  bay  ! 
But  pull  for  the  shore,  O  sailor  lads, 

We'll  fish  no  more  today. 


THANKSGIVING 

TODAY  we  thank  God  eating  turkey; 

I  wonder  if  our  thanks  are  heard, 
If  God  cares  only  for  mankind, 

Like  man,  and  nothing  for  the  bird. 


• 
58  ANIMAL  LIFE 


THE  WHITE  BADGE  OF  CRUELTY 

To  the  egrets'  breeding  ground 
Came  the  hunter,  stealing  round; 
Killed  them  by  the  hundreds  there, 
Fluttering  helpless  in  the  air; 
Left  the  young  to  stretch  and  cry 
Vainly  to  the  pitiless  sky; 
And  'twas  clone,  this  cruel  act, 
To  decorate  my  lady's  hat. 


Tender-hearted,  thoughtless,  vain, 
Weeping  o'er  another's  pain, 
While  she  wears  remorselessly 
The  white  badge  of  cruelty. 


HOGS 

JOHNSON  feeds  his  hog  to  fatness 

For  the  the  killing  in  the  fall. 
To  the  pen  he  comes  and  feeds  him 

As  he  answers  to  his  call, 
Looks  and  smiles  his  satisfaction, 

And  the  hog,  he  grunts  in  kind — 
Neither  seeing,  neither  knowing, 

They  alike  are  brute  and  blind. 


ANIMAL  UPB  59 


THE  TYRANTS  OF  THE  EARTH 

DESTRUCTION  waits  upon  our  steps, 

In  all  our  paths  and  roads, 
'Mong  weak  inhabitants  of  earth 

That  dwell  in  frail  abodes. 

We  maim  or  kill,  for  food  or  sport, 

All  other  life  on  earth; 
If  to  be  brutal  makes  the  brute, 

Why  claim  a  higher  birth  ? 

Flesh  is  flesh  and  blood  is  blood, 

Whate'er  the  lineament; 
Though  life  and  life  may  differ,  yet 

They  are  not  different. 

We  kill  our  brother  in  the  brute, 

We  kill  our  brother,  then 
Sit  down  to  eat  his  flesh  and  ask 

The  grace  of  God.     Arnen. 

HENRY  BERGH 

Founder  of  The  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to 

Animals. 

AN  advocate  before  the  Throne  of  Life, 
He  pled  for  them  that  could  not  plead, 

Came  with  entreaty  to  the  blinl   that  kill 
From  the  dumb  that  bleed. 


60  ANIMAL  LIFE 


THE  PRAYING  MANTIS 

MEN  named  thee  praying  mantis  fair, 
For  thou  seem'st  to  be  at  prayer, 

And  so  thou  art,  when  all  is  said, 
A-preying  for  thy  living  food; 
And  prays  not  man,  too,  in  this  mood, 

"Give  us  this  day  our  daily  bread  ? 


>  > 


"AND  GOD  GAVE  MAN  DOMINION 

THEIR  destiny  is  in  his  hand 
And  live  and  die  at  his  command 

The  cattle  on  a  thousand  hills. 
Unfeeling  as  the  senseless  stone 
And  blind  to  every  want  except  his  own, 

He  kills  and  knows  not  that  he  kills. 


>  > 


WAR 


1914 

THE  blood  of  the  fathers  still 

Runs  in  the  veins  of  their  sons, 
And  they  rise  to  do  the  will 
Of  death  and  the  deadly  guns. 

Like  the  phantoms  of  the  night, 
Like  the  ghosts  of  the  past,  they  seem, 

For  they  know  not  why  they  fight, 
And  they  fight  like  men  in  a  dream. 

They  only  know  they  must  fight, 

And  the  day  shall  find  them  brave, 
And  they  shall  sleep  at  night 

With  their  forebears  in  the  grave. 


6? WAR 

CONSCRIPTS 

SENT  by  our  parents  and  our  sweethearts, 
Sent  by  our  country  to  the  grave, 

We  have  no  chance  to  shirk  or  falter, 
We  have  no  choice  but  to  be  brave. 

We  hear  the  nearing  roar  of  battle 
And  see  by  night  its  ruddy  glow, 

And  yet  we  turn  not  back  nor  linger; 
Fate  drives  us  onward;  we  must  go. 

And  on  the  eve  of  morrow's  fighting, 
And  as  the  hour  approaches  nigh, 

Oar  last  thoughts  are  of  friends  and  lovers. 
It  was  their  will  and  we  must  die; 
Fate  drives  us  onward  and  we  go. 

THE  CASUALTY  LIST 

To  be  an  American  citizen, 

It  was  no  trifling  thing  for  them; 

We  others  live,  the  merchant  thrives, 

But  they — they  paid  for  it  with  their  lives. 

A  hundred  more  dead  in  the  fight, 
And  still  no  victory  in  sight, 
A  hundred  more  dead,  bitter  cost  ! 
Whoever  wins,  now,  they  have  lost. 


WAR  63 

THE  SOLDIERY 

THEY  fight  with  bodies,  for  they  have  no  souls, 

With  bullets  in  default  of  minds; 
Yet  who  would  grudge  them  fame  and  honor-rolls, 

For  virtue  is  of  many  kinds  ? 

And  though  in  higher,  nobler  actions  they 

May  fail,  yet  not  in  hardihood, 
The  brutal  heroes  of  a  brutal  day, 

The  chivalry  of  flesh  and  blood. 


" 


WHERE  IS  THY  BROTHER  ABEL  ?' 

"WHERE  is  thy  brother  Abel  ?" 
"Am  I  my  brother's  keeper?" 

Cain  answered  God. 
And  still,  like  Cain,  men  murder, 
"Am  I  my  brother's  keeper  ?" 

Still  answer  God. 


THE  VOICE  OF  OUR  AGE 

THE  guns,  they  speak  for  us, 

The  voice  of  our  age, 
The  metallic  thunder 

Of  unreasoning  rage. 


64  WAR 

THE  TRAGEDY  OF  THE  YOUNG  MEN 

DEAD  by  hundreds  and  by  thousands, 
Dead  the  young  men  in  their  prime, 

Dead  upon  the  field  of  battle, 
Dead  and  lost  to  future  time. 

Lost  the  pick  of  mind  and  muscle 
Out  of  which  the  race  is  built; 

Ay,  the  white  race  shall  be  whiter 
For  the  red  blood  that  was  spilt. 

Write  it  down  for  future  ages 

On  the  page  of  history, 
Write  in  blood,  Life  was  the  loser 

And  Death  won  the  victory. 


A  HERO 

HERE'S  to  the  soldier-hero 
With  cross  of  honor  won  in 

Dishonorable  war. 
To  prove  the  man,  it  needs  not 
The  cause  be  just,  for  folly 

Or  crime  will  go  as  far. 


WAR 65 

RELIGION  IN  THE  TRENCHES 

You,  priest,  who  come  to  preach  of  sacrifice 

To  us,  the  soldiers  in  the  trench, 

We  who,  without  a  thought  of  future  life, 

Beyond  the  reach  of  all  reward, 

Throw  our  lives  into  the  breach 

And  die  for  country.     And  you- — 

No  man  e'er  died  for  his  religion, 

And  to  be  good,  you  must  be  paid. 

Go  hence,  for  shame.     It  is  for  us  to  teach 

And  you  to  learn. 

LOVE  AND  LOYALTY 

To  prove  their  love  and  loyalty, 

The  soldiers  slay  and  then  are  slain, 

So,  lacking  consciousness,  their  love 
And  loyalty  are  given  in  vain; 

Not  only  in  vain,  but  when  too  late 

They  look,  for  all  the  world,  like  hate. 

A  SUGGESTION  OF  THE  DEVIL 

THE  devil  whispered  in  the  ear  of  man, 
'To  prove  your  courage,  you  must  fight." 
And  so  man  fought,  and  killed — his  brother. 


66 WAR 

CRIME  AND  PUNISHMENT 

tu 
You,  Emperor,  who  set  wheels  of  war  in  motion 

And  nation  onto  nation  hurled, 

And  who  have  written  your  imperial  will 

With  the  heart-blood  of  a  million  men, 

The  groans  of  dying  soldiers,  the  cry 

Of  widows  and  orphans  is  in  your  ears, 

And  you — you  live  and  laugh  just  as  before. 

What  punishment  would  be  the  greatest 
And  fit  for  such  enormity  ? 
That  you  might  have  the  sense  to  feel  it, 
But  that  can  never  be. 


TO  THE  GERMAN  EMPEROR 

DOUBTING  themselves,  the  people  made  you  king 
To  thmk  and  choase  for  them,  and  you  chose  war. 
Not  only  you  have  failed  them,  but  you  mar 
Their  faith  in  something  greater  than  themselves. 

ADVICE  TO  A  SOLDIER 

O  SOLDIER,  trust  not  in  your  cause, 

But  trust  in  your  artillery, 
And  pray  not  lest  you  should  arouse 

The  gods  and  lose  the  victory. 


WAR 


MILITARISM 

NAPOLEON,  Caeser,  all  the  generals 
Who  fought  for  glory  fought  and  won  in  vain; 
For  time  shall  turn  their  fame  to  infamy, 
Break  down  their  statues  in  the  parks  and  ra?:e 
Their  tombs,  and  they  shall  die  a  second  time, 
Be  thrust  out  with  the  mammoth  and  the  saurian, 
The  monsters  of  the  ancient  world. 


THE  TRIUMPH  OF   MIND 


WHEN  will  the  wars  be  ended 

And  their  kingdoms  overthrown  ? 

When  the  Brute  is  dead  buried 
And  the  Mind  conies  to  its  own. 


When  will  the  night  be  ended, 

The  secret  of  the  night  be  known  ? 

In  the  sunlight  of  Reason  tomorrow 
When  the  Mind  comes  to  its  own. 

THE  PRICE  OF  VALOR 

A  fifteen-monthly  wage  - 
'Tis  how  the  soldiers  fare. 

Ay,  bravery  is  cheap; 

'Tis  common-sense  that's  rare. 


68  WAR 

THE  CONQUERED  COUNTRY 

SPRING  comes  back  to  the  country, 

The  soldiers  from  defeat; 
O  cover,  Spring,  with  blossoms 

The  scene  of  their  retreat. 

The  breeze  of  morn  blows  gently, 

Blow  gently,  Winds  of  Fate; 

Within  the  conquered  country 

Smoulders  the  brand  of  hate. 


MISCELLANEO  US 


THE  NEW  WORLD 

NEW  world,  they  call  it,  and  expect 

From  us  new  thoughts  and  rhymes,  and  yet 

We  are  our  old  world  fathers'  sons 

And  in  our  veins  their  blood  still  runs; 

In  life  we  play  the  same  old  part, 

The  same  love  stirs  within  our  heart, 

The  same  old  ache,  the  same  old  pain 

Man  travels  from  himself  in  vain. 


WHEELS 

Wheels  !  wheels  !  wheels  ! 
For  Man,  the  Traveler, 
Down  the  road  of  the  world. 

But  the  world  is  round  like  the  wheels, 
And  "around"  is  a  road  that  leads  nowhere. 


MISCELLANEOUS 


*..«• 

•  t 


THE  CITY  OF  UNREST 

IN  the  Valley  of  Illusion 

I^ies  the  City  of  Unrest, 
With  blue  mountains  in  the  distance 

And  a  road  into  the  west. 

There  the  sun  is  paler,  dimmer, 
Than  the  liquid  moon  at  night, 

And  the  stars  shine  in  the  daytime 
With  a  preternatural  light. 

And  that  city's  ay  distracted, 

And  shall  be  eternally, 
With  the  noise  of  preparation 

And  the  stir  of  things  to  be. 

Travelers  are  leaving  ever 
By  that  road  on  far-off  quest, 

For  the  mountains  seem  to  beckon, 
Shadowy -like,  into  the  west. 


TO  THE  SPHINX 

O  SPIRIT  of  the  Changeless  Past, 

What  think 'st  thou  of  our  present  state  ? 

Thou  look'st  quite  through  us,  and  beyond 
The  eyes  of  Death  gazing  at  Fate. 


fr* 


MISCELLANEOUS 


AT  THE  INN  OF 


O  COSMIC  travelers 
Met  at  the  Inn  of  Life 

From  windy  roads  of  space 
And  dusty  fields  of  strife  ! 

Today  we  meet  as  men, 
And  have  we  met  before  ? 

And  shall  we  meet  again 
When  we  are  men  no  more  ? 

When  yon  are  no  longer  you 
And  I  am  no  longer  I, 

In  what  guise  shall  we  meet 
On  land,  in  sea,  or  sky  ? 

7  he  Toast 

Here's  to  that  meeting,  friend, 
On  land,  in  sea,  or  sky, 

When  you  are  no  longer  you 
And  I  am  no  longer  I. 


AGREED 

were  always  agreed  that  something  was 
But  what  the  wrong  was,  could  never  agree. 


|2 MISCELLANEOUS 

SPRING 

'Tis  spring  again  in  the  valley; 

The  lilacs  bloom,  as  of  yore; 
The  spring  comes  back  to  the  country, 

But  the  dead  return  no  more. 

'Tis  spring  again  in  the  valley; 

The  swallows  come  back  as  of  yore 
And  build  their  nests  in  the  chimneys, 

But  the  dead  return  no  more. 

A  FACE  IN  THE  GLASS 

THE  lady  looked  at  her  face  in  the  glass, 
And  smiled  to  see  that  she  was  fair; 

The  lady  smiled  at  her  face  in  the  glass 
And  all  her  wealth  of  golden  hair. 

But  that  was  a  long,  long  time  ago 

(And  time  is  thing  no  one  can  trust); 
The  lady's  been  dead  for  many  a  year; 
The  city  she  lived  in  has  fallen  to  dust. 

TO  A  BUTTERFLY 

THOU  winged,  fluttering  dream  of  the  worm, 

Man's  symbol  of  immortality, 

Frail  as  his  hope,  brief  as  a  summer's  day  ! 


MISCELLANEOUS  73 


TO  A  FIELD  OF  CELERY 

I  SHARK  thy  green  life,  blind  and  mute, 

In  the  soft,  moist  earth  and  sun-warmed  air. 

I  feel  the  rain  about  the  root, 

The  deadly  fungi  on  thy  leaves 

As  on  my  heart. 

We  are  mutual  friends  and  our  fate  is  one, 
Never  to  flower  and  come  to  seed, 
Used  for  ends  that  are  not  our  own. 

My  soul  has  gone  into  thy  stalks  and  leaves 
To  be  hawked  and  sold  in  the  vegetable  mart 
With  cabbage  and  beets, 
To  wither  and  perish  with  thee. 


HIRELINGS 

WE  are  the  hirelings,  men  who  know 
The  desolation  of  chill  dawns 
That  call  us  to  another's  work 
And  the  black  night  that  covers  all. 

THE  GREAT  DIVIDE 

BETWEEN  us  the  impassible  barrier  of  Mind; 
I  cannot  go  to  you  and  you  cannot  corne  to  me. 


MISCELLANEOUS 


TO  A  BOY 

O  EAGER  youth  a-going 

For  to  see  and  know 
Into  the  future, 

Where  I  cannot  go  ! 

Today  moves  toward  tomorrow, 
The  thought  moves  in  the  mind, 

But  time  that  takes  thee  forward 
Will  leave  me  behind. 


AN  AUTUMN  THOUGHT 

wind  blew  chill  o'er  the  bare  fields, 
I  shivered  and  a  sudden  fear 
Gripped  at  my  heart — what  if  the  spring 
Should  not  return  again  next  year  ! 


INSTABILITY 

the  earth  move  under  me  at  every  step. 
And  I  am  like  a  mouse  upon  a  moving  diec 
That  slips  beneath  him  as  he  runs, 
Rons  and  advanceth  not  one  step. 
The  earth,  unstable,  moves  beneath  my  feet 
And  everything  I  hold  to,  breaks. 


MISCELLANEOUS  75 


TO  DOUBLE  ROSES 

PER  VERTED  beauty,  sterile,  futile, 

Cut  roses  in  a  vase — 
O  gelded  flowers  of  Art  and  Science 

That  made  aud  claim  your  petaled  grace  \ 

O  dream  ye  yet  of  love's  fruition 

That  sweetens  still  the  summer's  breath  ? 

Life  beautiful  unto  no  purpose, 
Love  beautiful  in  death  ! 


TO  A  REFORMER 

THE  wrong,  you  say ,  is  this  or  that, 
Some  law  of  state  or  pelf. 

O  friend,  it  ie  not  this  or  that 
That's  wrong,  but  life  itself. 


SLEEP 

MORN  calls;  tbe  sleepers  drowsily  protest. 
But  there  will  come  no  rousing  morn  when  we 
Discard  the  warm  flesh  garments  of  our  life 
And  in  the  night  of  death,  stripped  to  the  bone. 
Lie  down  to  centuries  of  sleep. 


J&  MISCELLANEOUS 


SCRIPTA 


THOUGH  from  the  truth  itself  you  make  a 
Law  by  which  to  live  and  die, 

You  will  surely  mar  or  turn  it 
To  a  vice  or  to  a  lie. 

Life  is  changing  and  evolving, 
And  no  two  lives  are  the  same, 

And  no  generarcan  measure 
Out  each  individual  blame. 


DISPOSSESSED 


WmTEAtook  and  made  their  own 
This,  the  Indians'  ancient  home. 
Dazed  and  homeless,  see  them  stand, 
Aliens  in  their  native  land  ! 


EX  PARTE 

'Tis  well,  I  know,  and  right,  indeed, 
To  side  with  party  and  to  lean , 

To  fight  for  nation, hold  to  creed, 
And  yet  how  little  acd  how  mean  ! 


MISCELLANEOUS 


THE  WRECK  OF  THE  TITANIC 

To  the  saving  of  the  women, 

Their  last  thoughts  were  given  and  planned; 
And  they  died  like  men,  died  bravely, 

To  the  music  of  the  band. 

And  we,  too,  are  shipwrecked  travelers, 
Helpless,  drowning  on  the  land. 

Let  us  die  like  men,  die  bravely, 
To  the  music  of  the  band. 

AT  A  SOCIAL  RECEPTION 

TONIGHT  they've  tacitly  agreed 
To  lay  aside  their  loves  and  hates 
And  meet  upon  the  neutral  ground 
Of  triviality, — 
To  talk  and  yet  say  nothing, 
To  laugh  when  one  would  cry, 
To  carry  life  off  with  a  jest 
For  an  hour  and  say  good-by. 

GOLD 

DAY  coins  itself  in  sunset  gold, 
Night-buried  in  the  distant  west, 

And  we  who  bought  the  day  and  sold — 
Have  we  like  gold  unto  our  rest  ? 


: 

78 MISCELLANEOUS 


ALTER  EGO 

NOT  for  ourselves  the  world  is  won, 
Not  for  ourselves  we  live  and  die, 

But  for  some  dear,  beloved  one, 

Known  or  unknown,  or  far  or  nigh. 

The  book  we  read,  the  words  we  write, 

One  knows  and  shares  our  thought  and  view, 

Seen  or  unseen  in  the  daylight, 
Known  or  unknown  to  me  or  you. 


THE  OVERLAND  LIMITED 

the  past  we've  taken  flight 
And  we  are  rushing  through  the  night 
And  on  into  tomorrow. 
O  train  into  the  future  ! 
O  future  dark  with  fate  ! 
To  what  end  are  we  rushing 
And  what  tomorrows  wait  ? 

THE  WHITE  LIGHTS 

O  THE  lighted  streets  and  the  lighted  stage  I 
O  Youth  and  Beauty,  the  night  and  the  age  ! 
The  music  calls  and  the  white  lights  glow 
And  life  is  new;  come,  let  us  go  ! 


MISCHU,ANBOUS 


OF  MY  BROTHERS 

OF  my  brothers  in  the  strife  — 

How  each  one  became  the  fate 
Dreadful  to  some  other  life  — 

Seeing  which,  I  was  all  hate. 

Of  my  brothers  —  how  their  love, 

Blundering  in  a  night  of  fears, 
Was  the  hate  of  each  that  strove  — 

Feeling  which,  I  was  all  tears. 

THE  EMERGENCE  OF  MAN 

WHEN  the  groping  God  had  blundered 

Blind  into  man, 
The  earth  was  torn  with  battle 

And  the  red  blood  ran, 
When  talon,  tusk,  and  beak  had  blossomed 

In  the  skull  of  man, 
When  the  groping  God  had  blundered 

Blind  into  man. 

TO  THE  INDIAN  PIPE 

WHITE,  like  the  flesh  of  man, 

Like  man,  a  parasite,  — 

Thou  naked  plant,  half-bidden  among  the  leave^ 

Didst  thou,  too,  fall  through  sin  ? 


MISCELLANEOUS 


A  MERRY-GO-ROUND 

THE  world  is  a  merry-go-round, 

And  gaily  and  fast  we  ride. 
With  the  double  motion  of  days  and  years, 

We  swing  out  far  and  wide. 

"But  'around'  is  a  road  that  leads  nowhere, 

The  bored  ones  cry, 
"The  lost  go  around  in  a  circle." 

Youth  laughs  its  reply. 

O  the  world  is  a  merry-go-round; 

No  place  'tis  to  think  or  abide; 
So  let's  go  dizzy  with  motion, 

Let  us  be  children  and  ride. 


LOST  DAYS 

NOT  for  the  days  I  shall  not  live, 

'Tis  not  for  them  I  grieve  and  pine, 
But  for  the  days  that  I  have  lived, 

And,  living,  did  not  make  them  mine, — 
The  days  that  once  were  mine  to  mold 

And  fashion  to  the  heart's  desire, 
But  spoilt  and  ruined  with  bungling  hands 

And  lost  and  trampled  in  the  mire. 


MISC  EI.LANEOUS 


IN  THE  CITY 

THEY  that  live  within  the  city, 
Days  of  noise  and  nights  of  glamour, 

They  have  to  pay  the  price,  you  know; 
Some  with  soul  of  truth  and  honor, 
Some,  alas  !  with  youth  and  beauty, 

But  all  with  life  that  ends  in  woe. 

The  houses  look  down  on  the  people, 
Walking  in  their  giant  shadow  — 

They  seem  to  threaten  and  to  stare; 
And  the  people  shrink  and  shiver 
With  a  dread  unspoken  never 

At  the  marble  menance  there. 


THE  DREAM 

MY  life  draws  inward  to  a  dream. 

After  the  folly  and  the  fret; 
The  door  is  shut  against  the  world, 

Against  departure  locked  and  set. 

Pale  with  defeat,  and  deathly  pale, 

These  limbs  that  no  more  burdens  take- 

I  will  be  silent  and  forget 

And  dream  of  death  and  never  wake. 


82    _  MISCELLANEOUS 

VANITAS  VANITATUM 


and  mused  on  many  things, 
On  warrior-heroes,  saints,  and  kings, 

Evil  and  good  — 
On  life  and  death;  and  when  I  came 

To  where  they  stood  , 
Those  vagabonds  of  time  and  aim, 

Unto  my  mood, 
They  seemed  to  say,  "There  is  no  deed 

Under  the  sky 
Worthy  to  wreak  our  souls  upon, 

And  that  is  why 
That  we  stand  idle  in  the  sun.  '  ' 


TO  THE  SEA 

I  COMB  to  thee, 

0  salt,  unresting  sea, 
As  a  child  to  its  parent, 
For  I  was  born  of  thee; 
Thy  salt  is  in  my  blood 

And  thy  unrest  is  in  my  soul  — 
Ay,  I  am  the  soul  of  thee, 
The  spirit  of  thy  mood, 
And  eagerly 

1  sniff  the  air  and  watch  the  billows  roll. 


MISCELLANEOUS  83 


FROM  A  CAR-WINDOW 

WITH  smile,  and  sigh,  and  wave  of  hand, 
They  greet  the  traveler  through  the  land 

To  fairer  lands  beyond, 
From  dreams  behind  to  hopes  before, 
From  city  unto  city,  o'er 

A  lone  and  sterile  ground. 

O'er-labored  under  leaden  skies, 
They  view  with  dimly  yearning  eyes 

The  great,  rich  world  go  by. 
They  hear  it  roaring  through  the  night, 
And  in  their  dreams  for  Heart's  Delight 

They,  too,  take  train  and  fly. 


NATURE 

THE  hill,  and  wood,  and  meadow 
Are  nature,  but  not  mine; 

They  brood  in  peace  and  quiet, 
While,  restless,  I  repine. 

Why  do  I  feel  so  keenly 
What  they  so  calmly  take  ? 

They're  nature  sleeping,  dreaming, 
I'm  nature  wide  awake. 


84  MISCELLANEOUS 


MY  HEART  AND  I 

O  HEART  of  me  that  fails  and  falters 
While  youth  and  love  are  passing  by, 

Longing  to  go,  afraid  to  venture, 
Afraid  to  live,  afraid  to  die  ! 

O  Heart,  whence  comes  this  coward  shrinking 
From  out  the  lists  of  high  emprise, 

Fearing  alike  men's  praise  and  censure 
And  what  we  love  and  what  despise  ? 

Methinks  we've  lived  through  cataclysms. 
The  only  things  that  did  not  die, 

Or  crouched  in  dread  'mid  succulent  grasses 
While  monstrous  mastodons  went  by, 

Or  in  some  ancient,  hideous  battle 
I  think  we  must  have  died  of  fright — 

A  fleeing  shape  of  nameless  terror 
Pursued  through  vast  primeval  night. 


SUNDAY  EVENING 

COLD  suppers  and  deserted  streets — 

I  walk  alone; 
The  evening  chill  and  unknown  dread 

Cut  to  the  bone. 


MISCELLANEOUS  ...       8$ 

WANDER  SONG 

I  PASS  with  time  from  place  to  place, 

L/ike  time,  return  no  more; 
Always  a  new,  immortal  face 

To  greet  me  at  the  door. 

Friends  alter  not  nor  love  grows  cold, — 

No  change  in  life  is  rung; 
For  me  the  old  were  always  old, 

The  young  are  always  young. 

I  pass  with  time  from  place  to  place, 

L/ike  time,  return  no  more; 
Always  a  new,  immortal  face 

To  greet  me  at  the  door. 

HYPERSENSITIVE 

I  HAVE  no  joy  in  Nature's  drama, 

Trembling,  thinking  of  my  part. 
I  cannot  hear  the  sweet  bird  music 

For  the  beating  of  my  heart. 

I  cannot  see  the  splendid  sunrise 

For  the  shadow  oo  my  brain. 
I  cannot  feel  life's  joy  and  rapture 

For  its  bitterness  and  pain. 


66  MISCELLANEOUS 


THE  UNATTAINABLE 

WE  feel  in  distance  and  in  sound 

Vague  yearnings  never  put  in  speech; 

And,  seeking,  we  have  never  found, 
And  heaven's  just  beyond  our  reach. 

We  fail  and  faint  in  alien  lands 
And  all  seems  lost,  yet  all  is  well, 

For  pleasures  grasped  melt  in  the  hands 
And  heaven  gained  would  turn  to  bell. 

ALONE 

I  WALK  the  streets,  restless,  unknown, 
Then  back  to  this  one  room,  alone. 
K  turn  and  fret  in  aimless  quest 
And  fruitless  yearnings  unexpressed. 
I  chafe  the  silence  of  the  years, 
And  life-long  worries  grow  to  fears 
And  fierce  regrets  none  understands — 
Feeling  my  life  slip  through  my  bands. 

TO  A  BABY 

So  small  and  frail  thou  art,  baby, 

In  paths  tintrod, 
That  I,  who  never  cried  to  God, 

Cry  out,  O  God  ! 


MISCELLANEOUS 87 

IN  THE  SLUMS 

"WHY  are  the  people  poor  ?  "  I  asked. 

Replied  one  the  motley  throng: 
4 'Our  labor's  cheap,  the  food  is  dear, 

And  everything  is  wrong." 


>  > 


•  t 


'  *  Why  are  the  poor  so  dirty  here  ? 

Again  I  would  informed  be. 
"Is  it  because  the  water's  dear  ? 

But  no  one  answered  me. 


TOBACCO  SMOKE 

THE  conflagration  of  great  cities, 

Of  Moscow,  Rome, 

Lit  up  the  nights  of  weeks,  but  this, 

The  conflagration  of  man , 

G-tews  in  the-coa-te-  of-tirae 

AncK&noulders  through 


IN  EXTREMIS 

DYING,  we  find  no  rest, 
Tired  out  beyond  all  sleep, 

Lashed  on  by  pain  to  death 
Beyond  all  tears  to  weep. 


MISCELLANEOUS 


BETWEEN  THE  BAYS 

O  DARK,  and  damp,  and  drizzly  daye, 
Among  the  creeks,  between  the  bays  ! 
Black  swamps  and  ponds  covered  with  fogs 
And  mossy  stumps  and  rotting  logs 
Alive  with  terrapins  and  frogs. 
A  frowned  land  'neath  murky  skies, 
Where  humid  vegetation  thrives, 
Of  rapid  growth  and  quick  decay; 
And  if  the  clouds  uplift  a  day, 
Again  they  sink  and  settle  down 
O  'er  quaggy  marsh  and  gloomy  town. 
O  dark,  and  damp,  and  drizzy  days, 
Among  the  creeks,  between  the  bays  ! 


A  TOILER'S  CONSCIENCE 

I  CANNOT  read,  or  write,  or  idle 

In  clear,  fair  weather,  but  must  moil 

In  the  plowed  fields,  urged  on  by  conscience 
Born  of  an  ancestry  of  toil. 

But  when  the  day  is  wet  and  stormy, 
Or  Winter  drives  us  from  the  field , 

It  sets  me  free  for  reading,  writing, 
A  joy  that  labor  ne'er  can  yield. 


MISCELLANEOUS 89 

THE  AEROPLANE  * 

LIKE  birds,  men  fly  into  the  air, 
But  do  not  leave  the  earth, 
Although  the  moon  is  seen  afar 
And  beacons  many  a  star. 

O  man  who  dreams  and  dares  ! 
O  fragile,  winged  car  ! 
How  distant  is  the  goal ! 
How  far  the  nearest  star  ! 

BLOOD 

O  THOU  red  fluid  of  being,  Life, 
In  what  alembic  brewed,  under  what  spell  ? 
A  distillation  of  the  dawn  or  liquid  flame  ? 
O  who  shall  say  what  thing  thou  art, 
Thou  flux  of  life  red  from  the  heart  ? 

THE  BEGGAR 

WITH  mute  appeal  and  white  head  bowed, 
The  beggar  stands  amid  the  crowd, 
Amid  the  moving  stream  of  life — 
A  spectre  in  the  streets  of  strife. 


MISCBUUANEOUS 


A  HOUSE  DIVIDED  AGAINST  ITSELF 

WE  fight  in  civil  warfare, 

Where  victory  means  defeat, 
And  Poverty,  a  jackal, 

Hangs  on  the  day's  retreat. 

Q 

We  struggle  in  confusion, 

Divide  otir  strength  and  fall, 
A  strength  that  held  together 

Would  make  us  lords  of  all. 

How  long  this  insurrection, 

How  long  before  we  know 
We  have  one  life  and  welfare 

Against  a  common  foe  ! 


WHIP-POOR-WILL 

A  VOICE  is  heard,  but  no  one  is  seen, 
A  cry  in  the  night,  O  what  can  it  mean  ? 

It  sounds  like  our  own,  but  is  not  ours  — 
A  mimic  voice  of  the  twilight  hours. 

Is  it  the  Night's  inock  at  the  Day's  vain  strife? 
Or  the  Voice  of  Spring  in  the  the  dusk  of  life  ? 


MISCELLANEOUS 


WATER  ON  THE  DESERT 

WATER  flowing  on  the  desert, 

Flowing  from  the  mountains  down, 

Flux  of  life  in  motion,  mingling 

With  the  dry  earth,  bare  and  brown; 

Till  the  slumbering  sands  awaken 

At  the  liquid  touch  anew, 
Waken  into  grass  and  flowers, 

And  the  dream  of  life  comes  true. 

Water  flowing  on  the  desert, 
Cooling  to  the  parched  breath, 

Flux  of  life  forever  flowing 
From  the  rigid  jaws  of  death. 


TO  A  PINE  TREE 

WHAT  vague  desire  was  the  germ  of  thec 
That  stirred  into  life  and  grew  to  a  tree. 
And  blossomed  in  sex  and  fruited  in  seed. 
What  yearning,  what  groping,  felt  lack  or  need  f 

O  life  in  the  sap  !  O  soul  in  the  pine  ! 
How  strange  is  thy  life  compared  uuto  mine  f 
Yet  the  same  world-yearning,  the  same  earth  plan, 
That  made  thee  a  tree  made  me  a  man. 


MISCELLANEOUS 


WHEN  THOU  ART  OLD 

WHEN  thou  art  old 

Thou  shalt  go  on  a  crutch,  leaning  heavily, 
Or,  sit  stagnant,  propped  with  pillows, 
Feeble,  febrile,  apathetic,  pathetic. 

Thy  days  shall  be  days  of  utter  weariness, 
Of  insipidity  and  imbecility, 
And  the  night  shall  bring  no  respite; 
Thy  sleep  shall  come  by  starts  and  fits 
And  leave  a  bad  taste  in  the  mouth. 

No  recognizing  intelligence  shall  flash  a  greeting 
From  the  eyes,  but  thou  shalt  meet  thy  old  cronies 
With  clash  and  jar  of  wood  and  stone, 
Dull  and  heavy. 

And  so  thou  shalt  die  for  years, 

And  when  thou  art  utterly  dead 

Thy  heirs  shall  share  thy  goods  among  them 

And  bury  thce  with  a  secret  feeling  of  relief. 


AGE 


To  be  young  and  then  to  be  old  — 
There  is  nothing  sadder  in  life  than  tbie. 
Old  age  with  its  white  hair, 
A  signal  of  distress,  white  flag  of  surrender. 


MISCELLANEOUS 


SPECTRES 

THAT  old  man  creeping  down  the  street 

Was  once  the  baby  of  a  rosy -cheeked  girl. 

O  boy-father  and  girl-mother, 

If  you  could  have  seen  your  baby  then 

As  he  is  now,  the  spectre  of  love  and  youtti, 

How  it  would  have  frightened  you  ! 

Alas  !  we  all  turn  to  spectres  in  old  age 
And  haunt  the  scenes  of  our  youth. 


EMPTY  BOTTLES 

A  CHILD  is  playing  with  empty  bottles 
The  drunken  father's  thrown  away. 

There's  nothing  left  but  empty  bottle* 
And  the  play — 

Tragedy. 


GOD  SAID 

GOD  said:  "The  hero's  part,  to  play  it, 
The  flowers  of  life,  the  good  of  ill, 
Are  yours  if  you  but  say,  /  will" — 

And  do  you  know  ?  I  could  not  say  it. 


94  MISCELLANEOUS 

ROCKABY  BABY         < 

INFANT  asleep  in  the  cradle, 

I  sit  and  wonder  to  what  thou  art  sleeping, 

Plain  man  or  god,  leader  or  led, 

One  in  a  million  or  the  million, 

Whether  to  a  self-important  man-of -affairs, 

Or  to  a  shrinking,  cringing  vagabond, 

Who  shall  through  dreary  years  hang  limp 

Along  the  crowded  ways  of  life. 

Perhaps  thou' It  live  a  dope-slave  or  a  drunkard, 
Fast  bound  by  the  chains  of  habit 
In  a  burning  hell  of  remorse. 

0  where  and  what  is  thy  fatal  defect, 
Thy  tendo  Achillis  f 

Is  it  a  hereditary  taint  in  the  blood 

To  break  forth  into  virulent  corruption 

And  make  life  loathsome  ? 

Or  some  insignificant  blotch  upon  the  brain 

To  slowly  spread,  grow  with  the  growing  man, 

Till  the  whole  mind  if  blurred,  and  dulled,  atid  dead  ? 

Whether  thou  art  born  to  this  or  that, 

1  know  not,  but  one  thing  I  know: 

That  as  thou  wast  born  of  thy  parents'  yearning, 
Yea, of  the  yearning  of  ten  thousand  thousand  parents, 
Yea,  of  ten  thousand  thousand  centuries, 


MISCELLANEOUS 


Yea,  of  eternity,  so  thou  shalt  live  and  die 

Still  yearning,  vainly  struggling, 

Grasping  the  impalpable  air  in  thy  empty  palms. 


MICROBES 

The  world  is  bitter  with  its  strife 
And  all  its  ways  are  choked  with  life. 

THERE  is  blight  in  the  orchard,  anthrax  in  the  stable, 

And  fever  in  the  house. 

O  life  is  a  battle  with  life  !     I  am  weary  of  life — 

Life  that  preys  upon  life,  bacterial  life, 

Infintesimal,  multitudious,  parasitic,  pestiverous  1 

Where,  O  where  shall  I  find  death  ? 

'Tis  not   in  the  wormy  grave,  not  there,  not  here. 

The  world  is  a-squinning  and  crawling  with  life; 

Great  God  !  the  very  rocks  are  alive  ! 

From  life,  from  a  thousand  lives,  I  cry 

For  the  peace  and  stillness  of  death  ! 


AS  A  FLOWER 

MY  life  is  furled  and  droopeth  as  a  flower 

In  desolate  days  of  rain, 
And  it  shall  not  outlast  the  pelting  hour. 

Ne'er  lift  its  head  again. 


96 MISCELLANEOUS 

AN  INVOCATION  TO  PATERNITY 

O  Father  !  Mother  ! 
Ye  are  as  gods  to  kill  or  make  alive; 
Within  your  hands  the  helpless  future  lies — 
O  guide  and  save  ! 

O  Father  !  Mother  !  is  it  well,  the  life  ye  gave, 
Maimed  and  wronged,  a  shame  and  a  reproach  ? 
Have  the  unborn  no  rights  ? 

Shall  mind  ne'er  enter  in  the  making  of  the  mind, 
But  only  blind  and  senseless  lust  ? 

O  Father  !  Mother  ! 
Ye  are  as  gods  to  kill  or  make  alive; 
Within  your  hands  the  helpless  future  lies — 
O  guide  and  save  ! 

THE  BLACK  SIDE 

IN  the  race  struggle,  we  have  learnt 
White  man  and  white  man's  cruelty, 

For  we  have  been  tortured  and  burnt 
In  the  red  flames  of  jealousy. 

Yet  not  in  kind,  but  kindness,  we  repay 
The  hatred  that  no  kindness  can  remove. 

Though  we  may  have  the  child's  mind, as  they  say, 
We  have  the  child's  heart,  too,  and  that  is  love. 


MISCELLANEOUS  97 


REVENGE 

"I  SLEW  him  for  my  enemy, 
Wronged  and  enraged  thereat. ' 

"O  fool,  to  kill  your  enemy; 
Disease  would  tend  to  that." 

<0Twas  right  that  he  should  suffer  for 

The  evil  he  did  plan." 
'Why,  then,  you  should  have  let  him  live 
And  suffer  being  man." 


JOHN  DOE  AND  RICHARD  ROE 

JOHN  DOE  and  Richard  Roe, 
Names  of  men  that  no  men  know. 
What  if  it  should  prove  to  be 
You  and  I  the  mystery, 
You  and  I  that  no  men  know — 
John  Doe  and  Richard  Roe  ? 


KNIGHTS-ERRANT 

As  knights  of  the  eternal  quest, 
We've  no  abiding,  know  no  rest, 
And  start  and  stop  not  with  the  breath- 
The  feet  of  life,  the  winds  of  death. 


MISCELLANEOUS 


THE  VAGABOND 

You  ask  me  of  my  vagabondage, 

And  this  is  all  I  have  to  say: 
Who  travels  without  purse  must  travel 

A  weary  way,  aweary  way. 

I  came  through  valleys,  over  mountains, 
Beautiful,  I  have  been  told  — 

I  only  know  the  days  were  lonely, 
I  only  know  the  nights  were  cold. 

A  land  of  homes,  and  friends,  and  lovers, 

But  no  welcome  waited  me; 
Every  dog  was  fierce  against  me, 

Every  man  my  enemy. 

FROM  THE  OUTSIDE 

YE  who  live  safe  in  houses 
And  look  out  from  the  windows, 
What  know  ye  of  the  outside, 
Of  wet,  or  cold,  or  cloudy  ? 
That's  left  for  us,  the  homeless, 
Who  watch  the  days  and  shudder, 
Who  know  the  cold  of  winter, 
The  night  of  sleet  and  snow, 
When  homes,  like  stars,  are  lighted 
And  we've  no  where  to  go. 


MISCELLANEOUS  99 


STREETS 

THESE  streets  are  paths  of  duty 

To  the  toiling  crowds  and  show 
All  drab  and  grey  in  the  morning, 

But  at  night  they  glimmer  and  glow 
With  the  tired  content  of  the  evening 

To  the  thousands  that  homeward  wend, 
Yet  to  me  who  walk  uncertain 

They  have  no  meaning  or  end. 

Barred  out  from  the  world  and  its  pleasure, 

I  nightly  turn  from  my  hut 
To  walk  the  deserted  pavements, 

And  when  doors  are  opened  and  shut, 
I  hear  glad  voices  and  laughter 

And  see  from  the  cheerless  street 
On  the  blinded  windows  the  ehadows 

Of  wife  and  children,  sweet. 


BEAUTY 

BEAUTY  is  not  the  hue  and  glow  of  right 
Nor  for  man's  pleasure  given; 

E'en  Hell  itself  is  beautiful  at  night 
From  the  far  windows  of  Heaven. 


100 MISCELLANEOUS 

WEALTH  AND  POVERTY 

WEALTH  means  leisure,  freedom; 

Poverty  is  care. 
Wealth  owns  the  pearls  of  morning 

And  sunset  gold.     I  swear 

Who  owns  the  earth  owns  heaven; 

For  him  the  clouds  are  rolled; 
Even  poppies  by  the  wayside 

Are  bought  with  yellow  gold. 


THE  HARDEST  THING  IN  THE 
WORLD  TO  DO 

THE  hardest  thing  in  the  world  to  do 
Is  the  thing  you  put  off  doing, 
The  thing  you  did  not  do  yesterday, 
The  thing  you  did  not  do  last  month; 
The  hardest  thing  in  the  world  to  do 
Is  the  thing  you  put  off  doing. 


A  FRIEND 

GOLD  is  the  Friend  Munificent, 
A  necessary  friend  that  makes 
All  other  friends  unnecessary. 


MISCELLANEOUS  IOI 


THE  LABORER 

FOR  his  work  his  work  has  given  him 
Hard  thews  and  a  big  coarse  hand, 

And  his  eyes  are  sunk,  half-seeing, 
In  a  face  all  bearded  and  tanned. 

How  long  since  a  milk-white  baby 
He  clung  to  his  mother's  breast, 

While  the  girls  all  ran  to  kiss  him 
With  laughter,  cooing,  and  jest  ! 

And  what  is  the  fruit  of  his  labor, 
Long  days  in  the  wind  and  the  sun  ? 

Stone  streets  and  heavy  steel  railroads, 
Canals,  vast  levees  upthrown. 

He  has  lain  down  his  life  for  others, 

Bleeding  at  every  pore, 
And  the  world  of  wealth  and  leisure 

Goes  carelessly  riding  o'er. 


MASTER  AND  SERVANT 

THK  mind  that  scorns  to  be  a  servant 
The  role  of  master,  too,  will  swerve; 

What  makes  the  servant  makes  the  master; 
It  is  as  base  to  rule  as  serve. 


102 MISCELLANEOUS 

WANDERLUST 

WITH  vague  unrest  about  the  heart, 

I  wander  far  and  near, 
Drawn  by  a  Want  that  has  no  part 

In  all  I  see  or  hear. 

A  Want  each  day  made  manifest 
In  every  thought  and  act, 

North  and  south  and  east  and  west, 
In  this  and  that. 


LONELINESS 

I  WALK  the  streets  alone,  yet  not  alone, 
For  though  they  do  not  note  or  heed, 
I  have  the  company  of  thousands; 
Yet  if  one  should  speak  to  me 
I  should  be  lonely  indeed. 


IMPASSE 

DRIVKN  in  on  myself  from  every  side — 

No  outward  world  for  me. 

Turn  inward,  O  soul,  turn  inward  and  glow, 

A  red  coal  of  thought  hidden 

In  the  white  ashes  of  silence. 


MISCELLANEOUS  IO3 


THE  RETURN 

I'LL  go  back  at  lilac -time 

From  my  wandering  around  the  world, 

I'll  go  home  in  the  spring. 

Nay,  but  I  am  grown  old  with  wandering- 

I'll  go  back  at  autumn 

With  the  frost  and  falling  leaf, 

I'll  go  home  in  the  fall. 

Nay,  the  folks  are  dead  and  gone, 
And  I  '11  go  home  no  more  at  all. 


DESIRE 

MY  life  is  all  a  long  desire 

That  years  have  brought  no  tiigher, 

Left  unfulfilled. 

Love  at  the  heart  of  yearning,  cry — 
Cry  out  before  we  die, 
By  loneliness  killed. 

THE  MASQUERADE 

LIFK  is  a  masquerade.     The  fool  is  king, 
The  nobleman,  a  rogue — life  is  a  masquerade. 


IO4  MISCELLANEOUS 

AT  THE  ROAD'S  END 

I  WAS  Youth  and  Romance 

Fresh  from  sleep  and  dream; 

I  was  Youth  and  up  before  the  sun; 

My  heart  went  forth  to  meet  the  dawn. 

Now  I  have  been  and  I  have  seen, 
And  I  have  not  a  word  to  say. 
I  have  been  and  I  have  seen, 
And  I  am  weary  of  the  day 
And  turn  again  to  sleep  and  dream, 
Turn  again  into  the  night. 


FLOWERS 

As  flowers  that  men  pluck  wantonly, 
Clutch  at  their  beauty  and  sweet, 

In  a  moment  are  faded,  discarded, 
So  ye  girl-flowers  of  the  street. 

As  the  flowers  of  the  field  and  the  forest 
Bloom  not  for  beauty,  but  life, 

So  the  flower  of  man  in  woman — 
Daughter,  mother,  and  wife. 


_  MISCELLANEOUS  _  I£5 

MY  LOST  IDEAL 

UNTO  my  youth's  Ideal, 

"Adieu/'  I  said,  "but  stay; 
I  serve  the  world  and  for 

Tomorrow  give  today.  ' 

Now  after  many  years 

I  am  returned  again 
To  seek  my  youth's  Ideal, 

And  seek  and  seek  in  vain. 

'Tis  lost  and  gone  for  ay; 

I  ne'er  shall  find  it  more, 
Though  I  should  seek  fore'er 

The  wide  world  o'er. 

* 

Whate'er  our  lot  or  fate, 

We  can't  evade  or  shirk. 
The  man  is  what  he  does; 

His  life  is  in  his  work. 

THROUGH  LIFE  BY  TRAIN 


hurry  through  life  by  train, 
And  fast  and  faster  it  goes; 
But  we  will  pause  at  the  journey's  end 
And  rest  in  deep  repose. 


106  MISCELLANEOUS 

THE  DESERTED  HOUSE 

BACK  from  the  road  it  stands, 

House  of  another  day; 
No  more  at  life's  commands 

It  keeps  its  ancient  way. 

No  waking  at  the  morn, 

No  neighing  in  the  stalls; 
Day  lies,  like  night,  forlorn; 

No  footstep  in  the  halls. 

A  brooding  memory 

The  olden  time  endears, 
In  ruin  and  left  to  the 

Obliterating  years. 

A  BIRTH 

A  SINFUL  secret  babbled  to  the  world 
In  baby  words,  in  infant  clouts  unfurled. 
A  moment's  joy  turned  to  a  life  of  pain, 
To  die  a  thousand  thousand  times  in  vain, 

DEATH,  THE  INQUISITOR 

DEATH  tortures  before  he  kills 
Oa  the  rack  of  disease, 
Death,  the  Inquisitor  of  life. 


MISCELLANEOUS  1 07 


VAIN  ADVICE 

MY  heart,  no  more,  with  vain  repining, 
Profane  the  sacredness  of  grief, 

When  the  whole  world  is  filled  with  sorrow, 
And  seeks,  but  cannot  find,  relief. 

But  there  is  no  degree  in  sorrow, 
My  heart  made  answer,  and  of  all  , 

The  many  millions  that  have  suffered 
None  ever  thought  his  sorrow  small. 

And  'twere  inhuman  to  find  comfort 

In  others'  agony  and  moan; 
The  suffering  of  my  fellow  mortals 

Can  only  add  unto  my  own. 

IMAGINATION 

IMAGINED  work  is  play, 

Imagined  life  is  art. 
The  child  and  artist,  they 

Have  chosen  the  better  part. 

SCIENCE 

SCIENCE,  the  lamp  of  knowledge 

In  the  night  of  the  world, 

Lighting  the  steps  of  Man,  the  Explorer. 


l"6'S' MISCELLANEOUS 

A  CAMP-MEETING  PROMENADE 

A  RING  of  life  and  light 
In  the  black  night 
And  spectral  wood. 

'••/  i-  '  •  f  -  '   "*'-   Yif 

*  -.  •'•  ••>  '  *  * 

Lite  goes  in  couples,  arm  and  arm; 
Flesh  thrills  to  flesh;  the  night  feels  warm 
With  lust  and  glare. 

•j      _  ,-  ,        I  ; 

And  round  and  round  they  go, 
Sweetheart  and  beau, 
Expectant,  eager,  smiles  and  sighs, 
And  hot-flushed  cheeks  and  love-lit  eyes, 
Maiden  and  boy. 

An  altar  there,  the  Christian's  goal, 
Erected  to  life's  sin  and  dole, 
Dark,  silent,  now,  the  mourners  gone; 
Youth  circles  round,  a  merry  throng, 
With  beating  hearts  and  faces  bright, 
For  Youth's  in  love  with  life  tonight — 
The  altar  and  the  coffin  wait. 

LIMITATIONS 

WE  look  through  telescopes  to  see — 

Infinity; 
And  with  the  blocks  of  time  build  for — 

Eternity. 


MISCELLANEOUS  IOQ 


ALFALFA 

The  flower  of  the  pasture, 
Blossoming  protein. 

GRAZED  by  the  lowing  cattle, 
Cut  by  the  mowing  blades, 

I  grow  again  and  blossom 
After  the  ruthless  raids. 

The  grazing  and  the  mowing 
But  bring  me  on  my  way; 

I  sprout  and  spring  perennial 
After  a  crop  of  hay. 

The  bee,  too,  is  my  partner, 
Looks  after  all  my  flowers, 

The  tireless  wing  and  pander 
Of  my  numb  sexual  powers. 

Mowed  by  the  frost  of  winter, 
I  start  again  to  birth, 

Tenacious,  firmly  rooted 
In  the  deep  soiled  earth. 


IIP MISCELLANEOUS 

THOUGHTS 

EACH  soul  is  a  separate  thought, 
A  separate  thought  of  God, 
And  thought  and  thought  ignite 
From  friction  of  contact 
And  give  light  to  the  world. 

My  soul  is  a  thought  of  God 

In  a  wayward  mood  expressed, 

A  feeling  of  forlornness  and  failure. 


BEAUTY  AND  DISTANCE 

THE  glad,  the  beautiful,  the  fair, 
Are  found  in  yesterday's  despair, 
Old  griefs  made  beautiful  by  time 
And  set  to  music  and  to  rhyme. 


TENANTS 

WHEN  that  white  domed  Palace  of  the  Mind, 

The  Mind  vacates,  vile  worms  the  tenants  are; 

And  through  the  windows  there,  where  once  the  Soul 

Looked  forth  in  speculation  on  the  world, 

The  worms  crawl  in  and  out. 


MISCELLANEOUS  III 


THE  SISTERS  OF  MERCY 

THEY  come  from  the  last  sickness, 
A  white  corpse  void  of  breath — 

Clad  in  the  garb  of  mourning, 
They  bring  us  news  of  death. 

When  through  the  merry-making 
They,  silent,  take  their  way, 

The  mirth  dies  from  the  music, 
Men  cross  themselves  and  pray. 

They  come  like  pale-faced  spirits 
Breathing  awhile  our  breath; 

Clad  in  the  garb  of  mourning, 
They  bring  us  news  of  death. 


THE  CHILD-KING 

"Woe  to  thee,  O  land,  when  thy  king  is  a  child  !" 

A  CHILD  upon  the  throne  of  Life — 

Life  trembles  at  its  fate. 
But  Time  will  make  and  crown  him  Man- 

The  centuries  on  him  wait. 


112  MISCELLANEOUS 

"THE  FEMALE  OF  THE  SPECIES" 

YES,  "the  female  of  the  species  is  more  deadly  than 

the  male" 

To  the  foe  that  tracks  her  offspring  '  'and  her  instincts 

never  fail.' 

In  the  hour  of  danger  often  the  male  turns  coward, 

slinks  away; 

Leaves  the  female  to  defend  them  from  the  animals 

that  prey. 

Often,  too,  she  must  defend  them  e'en  from  him  from 

whom  they  sprung, 

For  the  male  is  blind  and  vicious  and  will  sometimes 

eat  his  young. 

Therefore,  hers  the  place  of  honor,  hers  the  forefront 

in  the  strife, 

She,  the  mother  of  the  species  and  defender  of  their 

life. 


THE  ANSWER 

"WHAT  is  this  life-force  ?     What  am  I  ?" 

To  which  my  soul  did  make  reply: 

"The  restless  spirit  of  the  earth 

That  groans  and  travails  unto  birth, 

Deep  down  in  elemental  night 

A  blind  god  yearning  toward  the  light." 


MISCELLANEOUS  1 1  3 


BROTHERS 

BROTHERS  we  were  born 

Into  the  centuries, 
And  brothers  we  in  prejudice 

That  makes  us  enemies. 


LIBERTY 

A  THOUSAND  years  ago  begun 

The  fight  for  liberty; 
A  thousand  battles  have  been  won- 

And  still  we  are  not  free. 


TO  KNOW  AND  NOT  TO  KNOW 

NOT  to  know  is  Hate 

That  in  cruelty  wreaks  its  fears. 
To  know  is  Love, 

And  pity  is  Love  in  tears. 

THE  UNPARDONABLE  SIN 

SEXUAL  levity  is  the  sin  unpardonable, 
Man  false  to  himself  and  the  purpose  o'er  him. 

Who  laughs  and  jeers  at  woman  as  woman 
Laughs  and  jeers  at  the  mother  that  bore  him . 


114 MISCELLANEOUS   

FORSYTHIA  AND  DAFFODILS 

WHEN  blooms  the  rich  forsythia 
We. know  that  Spring  is  here — 

All  flower  and  all  yellow 
Before  the  leaves  appear. 

She,  while  as  yet  retreating  snow 

Makes  white  the  distant  hills, 
In  the  brown  earth,  'neath  the  bare  boughs, 

Blooms  with  the  daffodils. 

Her  flowers  are  golden  bells 

Hung  in  March  winds  and  ring 

The  bridal  march  of  Spring, 
While  faery  daffodils, 

In  garden  plot  and  row, 

Their  golden  trumpets  blow. 

And  the  dreaming  folk  below 

The  airy  dales  and  dells 
Can  hear  them  blow 

And  ring, 

The  trumpets  and  the  bells 
Of  Spring. 


MISCELLANEOUS  1 15 

THE  MOUNTAIN  TRAIL 

SEE  the  snow-peaks  in  the  distance  ! 
Here  begins  the  quest  and  venture — 

Leave  behind  the  hearts  that  quail. 
Here's  the  end  of  road  and  wagon; 
Saddle  ponies,  pack  the  burros, 

Ride  upon  the  mountain  trail ! 

Where  the  trail  goes  winding  upward 
Over  broken,  rugged  country, 

Over  porphyry  and  shale, 
There  are  hints  of  fortunes  waiting 
In  the  float  from  hidden  ledges, 

Fortunes  on  the  mountain  trail. 

We  shall  seek  for  hidden  treasure 
Through  the  day,  and  in  the  evening 

Hear  the  old  prospector's  tale, 
Stories  told  around  the  campfire — 
Sleeping  out  beneath  the  pine  trees, 

Dreaming  on  the  mountain  trail. 

In  the  dawn,  auspicious,  golden, 
Saddle  ponies,  pack  the  burros, 

For  the  quest  o'er  hill  and  vale, 
Fording  streams  and  climbing  ranges — 
Forward,  Youth,  upon  adventure, 

Ride  upon  the.  mountain  trail ! 


Il6 MISCELLANEOUS 

THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAIN  COLUMBINE 

SHB  lives  in  the  lonely,  high  mountain  glen, 
Aerial,  lucid,  unpampered  by  men, 

Queen  flower  of  the  mountains,  the  columbine, 
And  breathes  the  delicate  air  of  summer, 

Cooled  by  the  snow-caps,  fragrant  with  pine. 

She  has  stood  on  the  bank  and  heard  in  a  dream, 
Through  countless  summers,  the  rush  of  the  stream 

O'er  rocks  that  impede  and  confine, 
Till  the  soul  of  the  rock  and  the  river 

Blooms  in  the  columbine. 


TO  THE  CALIFORNIA  POPPY 

O  POPPY,  thou  hast  conquered  with  thj^  beauty 
The  valley  meadows  and  the  uplands  warm, 

Until  thy  flaming  banners  are  advanced 

Up  mountain  walls  and  take  the  world  by  storm. 


COYOTE 

A  HOWLING  coyote, 

The  plain  and  dreariness- 
The  spirit  of  the  desert 

Crying  its  loneliness. 


MISC  ELL ANEOUS  1 1 7 


CAUSE  AND  EFFECT 

IN  Tennyson,  life  full  and  free 
Outpoured  in  songs  of  ecstasy. 

A  misborn  Pope,  writhen  in  pain — 
Song  turned  to  satire  on  his  lips. 

THE  WANDERER 

I  FEEL  shut  up  in  place,  and  go; 

There  is  a  longing  in  the  mind; 
O  do  I  travel  to  escape, 

Or  is  it  something  I  would  find  ? 

ELIZABETH 

SHE  was  the  maiden  hope  of  life, 

Our  dear  Elizabeth, 
A  hope  forever  lost  to  life 

And  was  not  gained  by  death. 

NOCTURNE 

EACH  sailing  world  hangs  out  a  light, 

In  depths  of  space  their  distant  vigils  keep. 

Silence,  an  ocean  dim  with  night, 

Breaks  in  dream  around  the  couch  of  sleep. 


IlS MISCELLANEOUS 

W.  C.  T.  U. 

FOR  sons,  and  brothers,  and  husbands, 
As  mothers,  and  sisters,  and  wives — 

By  love,  and  the  lives  we  gave  them, 
We  plead  with  men  for  their  lives. 

Each  year  we  bear  and  breed  them, 
Ten  thousand  men,  and  strong, 

To  be  drugged  and  killed  with  poison, 
A  sacrifice  to  Wrong. 

For  sons,  and  brothers,  and  husbands, 
As  mothers,  and  sisters,  and  wives — 

By  love  and  the  lives  we  gave  them, 
We  plead  with  men  for  their  lives. 


AN  EPITAPH 

MY  words — they  wronged  me, 

And  my  work — it  cheated  me; 

But  I  am  done  with  words  and  work 

And  words  and  work  are  done  with  me. 


MISC  ELLANEOUS  1 1 9 


THE  DRUNKARD'S  TOAST 

FILL  up  the  glass  !     We  drink  to  death, 
The  death  this  drink  shall  bring  to  pass  ! 
To  death-in-life,  the  drunkard's  death  ! 
Fill  up  the  glass  !     We  drink  to  death  ! 

We  drink  confusion  unto  life, 

To  prudence  and  the  work  of  years; 

We  drink  to  failure  and  neglect, 

To  child- wrong  and  to  woman's  tears, 

Ay,  drink  to  crime  and  to  distress 

And  then  drink  to  forgetfulness. 

Fill  up  the  glass  !     We  drink  to  death  ! 


THE  COURSE  OF  EMPIRE 

'WESTWARD  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way"- 
Westward  to  the  East,  to  be  supreme. 

Japan  becomes  an  empire  of  today 

And  China  wakens  from  her  opium-dream. 


PERSONAL 


TO  SWINBURNE 

THOU  hast  thrilled  us  into  rapture 
As  a  woman  thrills  her  lover, 
And  we  praise  thee  with  the  passion 
Thou  hast  stirred  to  life  and  being, 
And  its  scorn,  its  wrath  and  hatred, 
Keep  for  the  unfeeling  critic 
Of  thy  poetry. 


TO  GEORGE  STERLING 

SINCE  thou  hast  lived,  O  true-born  poet, 
Earth's  more  beautiful  than  before; 

Thou  hast  added  a  new  splendor 
To  the  wave  and  to  the  shore. 


PERSONAI, 12  I 

TO  RUDYARD  KIPLING 

You  love  the  rage  of  relentless  battle, 

For  it  was  there  that  your  soul  was  boru, 

Love  life  to  risk  it  and  fight  for  the  fight's  sake, 
And  have  for  everything  else  but  scorn. 

We  have  met  before;  we  need  no  introduction; 

We  fought  and  tore  m  the  primeval  mud. 
You  were  the  victor  and  I  was  the  vanquished, 

And  you  quenched  your  thirst  with  my  warm  red 

blood. 

Now  we  meet  again;  the  old  hurt  rankles; 

I  hate  with  the  hate  of  the  weak  for  the  strong 
And  you  with  the  hate  of  insolent  swagger 

And  sheer  brute  strength  that  can  do  no  wrong. 

You  conquer  once  more,  but  perhaps  tomorrow 
When  we  shall  arise  from  the  dust  again, 

You  shall  have  outslept  the  brute  and  the  warrior 
And  grant  the  peace  I  now  crave  in  vain. 

TO  DANTE 

O  SPIRIT  of  Vengeance  and  of  Flame, 
Who  took  the  name  of  Love  in  vain, 
Thank  Heaven,  by  thee  no  life  is  crossed, 
For  wert  thou  God  then  man  were  lost. 


122 PERSONAL 

G.  K.  CHESTERTON 

HE  who  should  have  been  the  leader 

Of  his  age  until  the  last, 
Like  Memory,  turns  backward 

To  the  graveyard  of  the  past, 

Foregoes  the  Great  Adventure, 
The  dream  of  a  better  way — 

What  part  is  his  in  the  future 
Who  has  none  in  today  ? 

But  the  fear  of  unknown  tomorrow 
Shall  stay  not  the  feet  that  climb, 

And  the  banners  of  Life  are  advanced 
On  the  parapets  of  Time. 


TO  F.  W.  H.   MYERS 

DOUBT-DRIVEN  from  Christianity 

And  sorrowing  after  immortality, 

And  groping  for  it  in  the  dark  unknown, — 

What  blind  thing  hast  thou  stumbled  on 

In  that  dark,  desperate  night  ? 

What  hidden  truth  hast  brought  to  light  ? 

But  if  it  be  not  immortality 

What  matters  it  to  thee  ? 


PERSONAL IJ3 

SHAKESPEARE  AND  THE  BACONIANS 

"But  he  that  filches  from  me  my  good  name, 
kobs  me  of  that  which  not  enriches  him, 
And  makes  me  poor  indeed." — Shakespeare. 

THE  laureate  of  the  poets — lo,  his  fame 
Has  reached  at  last  the  dull  ears  of  the  mob, 
Who  have,  roused  from  indifference  to  hate, 
Profaned  with  vulgar  hands  the  poet's  grave 
And  stolen  the  laurels  from  the  poet's  brow 
To  crown  a  hero  of  their  own,  the  lord. 
O  greatest  theft  of  time,  beggaring  the  world  ! 
What  fame  is  sure  since  Shakespeare's  is  not  sure? 


ANNIE  BESANT 

SHE,  the  gentlest  of  the  sage, 
Rose  above  her  sex  and  age, 

But  unequal  to  the  strain, 
Sighed,  became  woman  again. 


JOHN  BROWN 

JOHN  BROWN,  the  indiscreet, 

Imprudent  for  the  truth,  fanatic  for  the  right, 

Yet  grander  in  defeat 

Than  they  who  temporized, the  men  that  won  the  fight, 


124 PERSONAL 

KEATS 

THE  Greek  religion  (piety) 

Is  now  a  theme  for  poetry. 

In  broken  fane  and  painted  urn, 

Its  foolish  creeds 

And  cruel  deeds 

Are  overgrown 

With  moss  and  beauty  not  their  own. 

When  we  are  one  with  Greece  and  Rome, 

And  our  religion,  in  its  turn, 

Its  turn  completes, 

Becomes  mythology, 

Then  Christianity 

Shall  have  its  Keats. 

IZAAK  WALTON 

HE  felt  the  beauty  that  he  sought, 

But  not  the  havoc  that  he  wrought, 

While  angling,  listening  to  the  flow 

Of  silver  streams  through  tangled  green, 

Himself  the  discord  in  the  scene. 

But  life  is  sleep — how  should  he  know  ? 

And  death  brought  on  a  deeper  sleep; 

And  o'er  him  sleeping  Jet  us  weep, 

But  not  too  loud  lest  he  awake 

And  seeing  all  his  gentle  heart  should  break. 


PERSONAL 125 

TO  JOYCE  KILMER 

After  reading  his  poem ,  "To  a  Young  Poet  Who 
Killed  Himself  "  in  which  he  calls  the  dead  poet  "# 
coward  and  an  ass.' 

Do  only  cowards  kill  themselves 
That  "coward"  you  must  cry  ? 

Is  it  not  cowardice  to  live 
For  him  who  fears  to  die  ? 

Not  cowardice  excites  your  spleeen, 
Though  "coward"  you  must  cry; 

It  is  because  his  bitter  death 
Gives  your  smug  creed  the  lie. 

TO  FATHER  TABB 

THY  right  to  be  a  father 
The  Church  took  without  shame, 

And  then  as  if  in  irony 
Gave  to  thee  the  name. 

Renouncing  earth  for  Heaven, 

Thou  lost  the.  life  divine — 
The  laugh  of  little  children, 

A  woman's  hand  in  thine. 


_26 PERSONAL 

THOREAU  AT  WALDEN 

I  WONDER  if,  soul-satisfied, 
He  felt  at  home  with  birds  and  trees, 
And  never  tossed  from  side  to  side 
At  night,  restless  and  ill  at  ease, 
And  if  he  did  not,  missing,  grieve 
And  yearn,  like  Adam  before  Eve, 
The  rustle  of  a  dainty  dress, 
A  voice,  a  touch,  a  soft  caress. 


TO  EUGENE  V.  DEBS 
Socialist  candidate  for  president. 

HAIL  champion  of  the  losing  fight 
For  Brotherhood  and  Love  and  Right 
'Gainst  Hate  and  Greed,  ne'er  counting  cost, 
A  losing  fight  that's  never  lost  ! 


PERSONAL 127 

AVE  ET  VALE 

HOMER  Dante,  Shakespeare,  Milton, 

Like  dead  volcanoes  stand, 
Vast  vents  of  ancient,  burnt-out  passion 

In  a  forgotten  land. 

O  dramas  made  of  crime  and  folly 

And  epics  of  the  sword, 
Ye  please  no  more,  your  date  is  ended, 

Never  to  be  restored. 

For  time  shall  bring  a  greater  Shakespeare, 

An  Iliad  different  far — 
A  tragedy  without  a  murder, 

Brave  men  without  a  war. 

THE  ILIAD 

THEY  did  not  win  and  lose  as  men, 
But  as  the  puppets  of  the  gods, 
Who  pulled  the  strings,  deciding  when 
And  how  the  war  and  what  the  odds. 
No  heroes  they,  not  even  men, 
But  puppets  of  the  dallying  gods. 

And  these  half-men  and  meddling  gods 
A  poet  has  made  immortal. 


128      PERSONAL 

AT  THE  SIGN  OF  LYRE 
To  My  Favorite  Poet 

AT  the  Sign  of  the  Lyre 

With  many  poets  I  have  caroused, 

But  thou  alone  didst  never  tire 

And  life  from  dullness  always  roused. 

And  my  last  journey  there  shall  end 

At  the  Sign  of  the  Lyre, 
For  it  is  there  that  I  would  spend 

The  last  night  before  the  fire. 

And  I  shall  smile  with  thee  at  pain 
And  shall  in  death,  as  life,  rejoice, 

And  I  shall  hear  thee  sing  again 
And  die  with  rapture  on  thy  voice. 

OPEN  HOUSE  : 

"  'With  this  same  key 

Shakespeare  unlocked  his  heart;'  once  more, 
Did  Shakespeare  ?     If  so,  the  less  Shakespeare  he." — Browning, 

You,  Browning,  wrote  your  brains  away, 
And  did  you  nowhere  show  your  heart  ? 
Aha  !  you  thought  to  be  o'er-smart, 
Conceal  yourself  behind  your  art — 
It  palpitates — 'tis  plain  as  day. 


PERSONAL 129 

THE  DEAD  BOSS 

Matthew  S.  Quay\  obitt,  1904.. 

THE;  boss  is  dead  ! 
Office  seekers, 
Henchmen  and  heelers, 
Bow  the  head 
And  mourn  your  loss, 
For  the  boss  is  dead. 
The  great,  great  boss  ! 

He  was  a  great  man  in  a  small  way: 

He  robbed  the  people  and  won  their  applause 

And  ruled  a  whole  state  as  his  own. 

He  was  a  great  man  in  a  small  way: 

His  heart  ne'er  thrilled  to  a  noble  cause, 

And  he  lived  for  power  alone. 

Henchmen  and  heelers,  pass  on  before 

The  gilded  casket  where  the  dead  boss  lies. 

He  worked  for  you,  but  his  work  is  o'er; 

Then  mourn  and  weep, — 

Weep,  weep,  weep, — 

And  bury  him  deep, — 

Deep,  deep,  deep, — 

So  deep  that  his  spirit  may  never  arise 

To  trouble  the  world  any  more  ! 


PERSONAL 


SOLD 

An  Election  Day  in  Delaware. 

THOUGH  its  badge  was  an  eagle,  the  party  must  own  it 
Was  the  dollar  that  won,  not  the  eagle  upon  it. 
Addicks  bought  it,  you  know  very  well; 
So  who  shall  question  his  right  to  sell 
Or  do  as  he  please  with  the  thing  he  bought  ? 

The.  sovereign  people,  the  young  and  the  gray, 

All  marched  to  the  poles  on  election  day 

And  voted  their  liberty  clean  away. 

For  a  rake-off  advanced,  they  sold  him  the  right 

To  stab  in  the  back  and  plunder  at  eight. 

They  were  bought  and  sold  like  hogs  on  the  drive, 
A  white  man  for  ten  and  a  nigger  for  five, 
Wheedled  and  driven  and  cheated  and  sold  — 
He  bought  them  with  silver  to  sell  them  for  gold  ! 
In  selling  themselves  they  surely  were  sold  !  — 
Sold  !  sold  !  sold  ! 


PLACE 


vSPRING  IN  DELAWARE 

SPRING  in  Delaware — 
You  can  see  it  in  the  flowers, 
You  can  feel  it  in  the  air, 
You  can  hear  it  in  the  singing 
Of  the  birds  a-building  there. 

Spring  in  Delaware, 
In  the  heart  and  in  the  air; 
Once  I  felt  it  and  I  lived  it, 
Spring  and  youth  in  Delaware. 


1 32  PLACE 

SAN  FRANCISCO 

THE  earth  it  shook  and  opened, 

And  the  city  fell, 
But  men  again  have  builded 

On  the  lid  of  Hell. 

And  should  again  it  crash  down, 
Again  they'd  build  their  will; 
Earth-thunder  cannot  daunt  them 
And  only  death  can  kill. 

CALIFORNIA 

EMIGRANTS — 
Westward  to  California, 
Sunset  and  dreams — 

But  the  sun  still  sets  in  the  west 

And  the  ocean  rolls  between  us  and  our  dreams. 

DAYS  ON  PUGET  SOUND 

DAYS  of  grey  on  Puget  Sound, 

Sunless  days  that  dripped  with  rain, 

Lost  in  fog  and  mist  profound, 
Never  to  be  found  again. 


PLACE 133 

MOJAVE  HILLS 


THE  herds  find  here  no  grazing, 
The  birds  no  welcome  trees; 

The  life  that  passes  by  us 
Is  the  only  life  one  sees. 

Our  loneliness,  men  feel  it; 

They  look  and  go  away. 
We  are  weary  of  being  silent 

And  tired  of  the  night  and  day. 

The  road  upon  the  hillside, 
It  leads  where,  do  you  know  ? 

What  lies  beyond  the  horizon  ? 
We  brood  and  long  to  go. 


CHICAGO 

'Tis  the  city  of  the  West,  of  democracy  and  toil, 
Of  the  great,  broad  prairie  and  its  deep,  rich  soil. 

O  the  labor  that  builds  and  the  wealth  that  employs  ! 
O  city  of  action  and  stunned  by  its  noise  ! 

'Tis  the  West  of  London,  Vienna,  Berlin — 
As  young  as  youth  and  as  old  as  sin. 


134 PLACE 

THE  DESERT:  NEVADA 

STRICKEN  by  the  hand  of  Fate, 

All  things,  motionless,  await 

The  rain  that  never  comes;  no  hope 

In  cloudless  skies.     Far  westward  slope 

Low  bastioned  hills  without  a  tree, 

Dead-guarding  some  dread  mystery. 

The  land  lies  far  in  weary  miles, 
Under  the  sun,  across  the  sands. 
An  aromatic  scent  beguiles, 
Of  sage,  sole  plant  in  arid  lands. 
From  desert  floors,  wind-swept,  arise 
Dust-clouds,  like  smoke,  unto  the  skies. 

CASA  GRANDE 

Arizona 

WIND  across  the  ancient  ruin, 
Blown  from  the  forgotten  past, 

With  what  memories  it  is  laden, 

Dreams  and  loves  that  could  not  last  ? 

Blown  from  out  the  brooding  silence, 
Blown  across  the  desert  sand, 

Cries  of  battle,  lamentations 
Of  a  race  that  lost  the  land  ! 


PLACE 


THE  SEVEN  CITIES  OF  CIBOLA 

Arizona 

FROM  my  labor  in  the  valley 
I  often  turn  and  northward  gaze 

At  the  far  mountains,  faint  in  distance, 
Dim  with  atmospheric  haze. 

Those  are  no  mountains  of  trap  or  granite; 

They  are  touched  by  no  earthly  beams; 
Those  shapes  are  air  castles,  romantic, 

And  in  the  shadowy  land  of  dreams. 

It  was  here  came  Corouado 

And  it  was  yonder  that  he  sought 

The  seven  cities  of  Cibola, 

Resplendent,  like  a  golden  thought. 

I,  too,  some  day  shall  go  to  seek  them, 
Perchance  ne'er  to  return  again, 

The  seven  cities  of  Cibola 

That  Coronado  sought  in  vain. 

SUNSET  IN  ARIZONA 

THE  day's  heat  settles  along  the  horizon, 
Behind  the  crater-shaped  hills  that  glow, 
The  furnaces  of  even. 


136  PLACE 

THE  DESERT:  ARIZONA 

THE:  mountains  rise  abrupt  and  angular 

From  the  plain,  dry  and  bare. 

Rock  and  sand  heaped  pell-mell  on 

The  desert  floor,  the  fragments  of  a  world, 

Cleft  by  an  ancient  water-course, 

The  dried-up  river  of  Time. 

A  lizard,  see,  on  some  forgotten  errand 

Has  fallen  asleep.     A  giant  cactus  stands, 

With  headless  trunk  and  blunt  arms  stretched, 

Imploring,  to  the  sky. 


AN  ARIZONA  TOAST 

DRAUGHTS  of  heaven,  distilled  sunlight, 

Transparent,  tonic,  dry, 
Blown  down  mountain  and  o'er  desert 

Out  of  the  clear  blue  sky. 

Standing  in  the  crystal  ether, 

The  desert  floor  upon, 
Fill,  we  drink  to  Arizona 

The  goblets  of  the  sun. 


PLACE  137 

ROMANCE  IN  CALIFORNIA 

AY,  there  was  romance  once  in  California, 

A  gleam  upon  the  mountain  and  the  plain, 

And  then  the  booster  came, 

And  he  would  grasp  it  in  his  hand, 

Advertised  it,  offered  it  for  sale, 

And  it  vanished  from  the  land. 


ESSAYS  IN  CONSCIOUSNESS 


PROTOPLASM  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS 

CONSCIOUSNESS  is  a  stage  in  the  evolution  of  sensa- 
tion. Without  the  sensitive  medium  of  living  proto- 
plasm there  could  be  no  consciousness — no  thought, 
mind,  soul.  What  feels,  thinks,  and  speaks  in  us  is 
the  universe,  the  universe  become  partially  conscious. 
As  electricity  passing  through  a  carbon  filament  is 
turned  into  light,  so  sensation  in  the  brain  of  man  is 
turned  into  consciousness;  but,  unlike  electricity,  it 
first  reconstructs  the  medium  through  which  it  is  turn- 
ed into  consciousness. 


MORALITY  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS 


"If  I  had  one  prayer  to  make  it  would  be,  God  give  me  to  understand." 

— Ferramt. 


BECAUSE  so-called  morality  is  often  more  or  less  im- 
moral, some  people  have  decided  that  we  would  be  bet- 
ter without  it,  while  others  have  declared  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  morality.  But  morality  should 
not  be  taken  at  man's  valuation  any  more  than  him- 
self. If  you  will  analyze  so-called  morality,  you  will 
find  at  the  bottom  intention,  intention  to  do  what  is 


142  ESvSAYS    IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

ii*' 

right, but  intention  itself  cannot  distinguish  right  from 
wrong.  We  must  know  the  right  before  we  can  put  it 
into  practice.  In  other  words, the  morality  of  the  indi- 
vidual is  dependent  upon  his  consciousness.  It  is  not 
morality  that  is  at  fault,  but  our  idea  of  morality.  All 
the  religion,  all  the  good  intentions  in  the  world,  will 
profit  a  man  nothing  if  he  lack  understanding. 


CREATION  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS 

"The  intestine  rules  the  world.     Life  is  a  void  that  only  death  can  fill." 

— Fabre. 

I  SAW  a  black  snake  yesterday  with  a  green  frog  in 
its  mouth.  I  would  engrave  this  on  our  walls  and 
monuments  as  a  symbol  of  organic  life-4— a  snakv  with 
a  frog,  in  its  mouth. 

That  one  species  of  animals  should  prey  upon  an- 
other, and  should  be  compelled  thereunto  by  the  ne- 
cessities of  existence,  is  damnable,  yet  this  principle 
lies  at  the  root  of  all  life.  Life  is  the  infinite  conver- 
sion of  one  form  of  life  into  another.  It  is  intensely 
cruel,  but  unconsciously  so,  for  whenever  life  becomes 
conscious  of  its  own  acts,  of  the  conditions  of  exist- 
ence, it  is  filled  with  nausea,  horror,  and  dismay 
thereat.  Therefore,  life  as  it  is,  life  that  preys  upon 
life,  could  not  have  been  the  result  of  conscious  design 
and  foresight  hi  nature.  The  idea  of  a  conscious  god 
is  monstrous. 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 143 

THE  HUNTER-SPORTSMAN 

"Boys  throw  stones  at  frogs  in  sport,  but  the  frogs  do  not  die  in  sport, 
but  in  earnest." — Bion. 

THE  hunter-sportsman  is  an  animal  that  finds  his 
pleasure  in  the  suffering  and  death  of  other  animals. 
There  is  nothing  more  horrible  in  life  than  an  animal 
stalking  its  prey,  and  the  most  horrible  feature  of  it  is 
the  pleasurable  excitement  in  suffering  and  death, 
and  the  hunter-sportsman  lingers  as  a  survival  of  this 
pleasure.  But  he  is  not  the  monster  that  he  appears 
to  be,  for  he  is  unconscious  of  the  suffering  and  death 
and  feels  only  the  sense  of  conflict.  The  conflict, 
however,  is  not  between  the  life  of  the  hunter  and  the 
life  of  the  animal,  but  between  the  animal's  chance  to 
escape  and  chance  of  being  killed.  It  is  an  unfair  ad- 
vantage taken  by  the  strong  over  the  weak.  It  is  not 
even  sport;  it  is  unconscious  bully  ism. 

We  live  at  the  expense  of  other  life  and  even  our 
pleasures  are  sanguinary  and  fatal. 


LOVE  AND  HATE 

LOVE  and  hate  are  both  partial.     Love  cannot  be 
depended  upon  for  justice  any  more  than  hate. 

"Love  is  a  passion,  not  a  virtue, '  declared  Ninon 
de  Lenclos,  and  when  we  see  thwarted  love  end  in 
cruelty  and  murder  we  feel  inclined  to  agree  with  her; 


144  ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 


nor  is  our  opinion  altered  when  we  turn  to  so-called 
spiritual  love,  the  love  of  God  that  burnt  heretics  at 
the  stake  and  the  love  of  morality  that  ends  in  immo- 
rality. 

Hate  is  often  an  indirect  result  of  love.  The  love 
of  what  we  believe  to  be  good  is  the  hate  of  what  we 
believe  to  be  evil.  It  is  because  the  patriot  loves  his 
own  country  that  he  hates  his  neighbor-country.  Men 
hate  because  they  "love,  not  wisely,  but  too  well," 
and  the  remedy  is  to  be  found  in  the  rationalization  of 
love,  consciousness. 

It  is  useless  to  preach  love:  if  one  lack  understand- 
ing, it  will  only  get  him  into  trouble;  if  he  have  under- 
standing, love  will  take  care  of  itself.  The  Christian 
religion  is  an  example  of  the  folly  of  attempting  to 
drive  out  hate  with  love;  instead  of  driving  it  out,  it 
only  increased  it.  Christianity,  the  religion  of  love, 
surpasses  all  others  in  hate. 


MATTER 

WHEN  I  ask  my  friends  what  they  mean  by  spirit- 
ual they  talk  about  the  invisible,  the  unseen,  and  point 
to  the  ether  of  space.  But  I  have  already  been  there, 
although  I  have  no  memory  of  it,  for  there  is  no  mem- 
ory in  that  place,  nor  knowledge,  nor  life.  Out  of 
the  vapor  and  invisible  gasses  I  have  arrived  and  walk 
firmly  on  the  solid  earth.  Visible  and  palpable  matter 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS  145 

is  the  last  word  in  evolution,  the  highest  stage,  not 
the  lowest. 

I  do  not  scorn  nor  flout  matter.  I  cling  to  the  gran- 
ite of  matter.  I  embrace  the  earth  with  affection. 
O  matter  !  matter  !  how  precious  you  are  to  us  whose 
lives  you  condition,  beautiful  in  the  colors  of  the  land- 
scape, sweet  to  kiss  in  the  red  lips  of  the  maiden  ! 

After  all,  the  so-called  spiritualist  does  not  care  for 
the  spiritual,  or  non-matter,  any  more  than  the  mate- 
rialist. When  he  attempts  to  picture  a  future  life  it 
is  always  in  the  terms  of  matter.  His  spirit  is  the 
ghost  of  matter. 


PATRIOTISM 

PATRIOTISM  is  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  or 
self-assertion  as  a  racial  or  national  unit.  In  the 
average  citizen  it  takes  the  form  of  racial  jealousy  or 
idealized  prejudice — "my  country,  right  or  wrong. " 

We  cannot  get  rid  of  our  instincts,  nor  is  it  desirable 
that  we  should,  but  we  can  rationalize  them,  and  if 
patriotism  were  rationalized  we  would  be  able  to  treat 
our  neighbor-nations  fairly,  and  even  to  symyathize 
with  their  aspirations,  without  losing  our  racial  integ- 
rity. The  evil  of  patriotism  is  not  in  patriotism  itself, 
but  in  the  patriot,  and  the  remedy  is  civilization  or 
the  coming  of  age  of  instinct,  which  is  reason. 


146  ESSAYS    IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

TRUE  GREATNESS 

IT  is  not  the  scientist  whom  the  people  call  great 
and  delight  to  honor,  not  the  men  who  have  helped 
and  benefited  mankind  through  scientific  discovery 
and  invention,  but  the  warriors  and  conquerors,  the 
Alexanders  and  Napoleons.  The  only  thing  that  the 
fool  and  the  bully  can  understand  is  a  licking. 

Napoleon  could  win  victories,  but  he  did  not  know 
what  to  do  with  them  when  he  had  won  them.  War 
followed  war  and  one  battle  led  to  another  and  to 
nothing  else.  No  man  ever  made  a  greater  failure  of 
his  life  than  Napoleon,  his  victories  being  only  prelude 
to  defeat,  his  leadership  ending  not  only  in  the  ruin 
of  himself,  but  in  the  ruin  of  his  country  also.  He 
left  death  and  destruction  in  his  wake  and  cut  down 
the  stature  of  the  French  race  nearly  two  inches.  He 
was  worse  than  the  black  plague  that  swept  through 
Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  depopulating  towns  and 
cities,  for  the  plague  took  its  toll  of  death  from  old 
and  young,  weak  and  strong,  alike,  but  Napoleon 
would  have  only  the  pick  of  mankind,  the  young  and 
the  strong.  His  fame  is  not  founded  upon  individual 
worth,  but  upon  the  folly  of  mankind  that  makes  such 
a  career  possible.  The  glory  of  Napoleon  is  the  dis- 
grace of  mankind. 

Let  us  compare  him  with  another  Frenchman,  Pas- 
teur, who,  by  fighting  and  conquering  the  real  enemy 
of  mankind,  disease,  has  added  to  the  life  and  endur- 


ES3AYS   IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 147 

ance  of  the  human  race,  and  the  effect  of  whose  work 
is  cumulative  and  will  last  as  long  as  there  is  reason 
in  the  brain  of  man. 

The  truly  great  man  is  the  scientist  who  adds  to 
the  sum  of  human  knowledge.  'The  rest  is  all  but 
leather  or  prunella." 


DEMOCRACY  AND  AUTOCRACY 

DEMOCRACY,  like  autocracy,  is  a  system  or  method 
of  government  and  not  the  government  itself,  which 
may  be  anything  from  individualism  to  socialism,  from 
competition  to  co-operation.  A  democracy  is  a  state 
where  questions  of  government  are  submitted  to  the 
tribunal  of  the  mind  of  the  people  and  the  defeated 
party  agrees  to  abide  by  the  decision ,  provided  he  have 
the  liberty  of  free  speech  with  which  to  defend  his 
measure  and  appeal  from  the  decision.  Free  speech 
is  the  weapon  of  democracy.  The  victories  of  de- 
mocracy are  won  in  the  brain,  not  on  the  battlefield; 
with  ballots,  not  with  bullets. 

Autocracy  is  founded  on  physical  force,  the  only 
thing  the  ignorant  can  understand;  democracy  is  a 
matter  of  intelligence.  War  is  an  institution  of  au- 
tocracy and  has  no  place  in  a  democracy  except  as  a 
defense  against  autocracy.  When  the  United  States 
resorted  to  civil  war  to  decide  the  slavery  question  it 
ceased,  for  the  time  being,  to  be  a  democracy. 


148  ESSAYS    IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

NOTES  ON  NIETZSCHE 
Cruelty  and  Consciousness 

THE  outstanding  feature  in  the  philosophy  of  Nietz- 
sche is  cruelty.  He  speaks  of  cruelty  as  "one  of  the 
festal  joys  of  mankind"  and  mouths  it  over  and  over 
as  though  it  were  a  sweet  morsel.  He  is  even  more 
blindly  cruel  than  the  animal,  for  the  animal  does 
usually  have  some  regard  for  its  own  species,  or  it 
would  cease  to  exist,  but  the  selfishness  of  Nietzsche 
is  directed  against  the  members  of  his  own  species. 
The  lamb-killing  eagle,  his  symbol  of  ruthlessnees,  is 
not  such  a  fool  as  Nietzsche,  for  the  eagle  preys  upon 
lambs,  not  upon  other  eagles. 

His  tirade  against  sympathy  and  pity  is  the  wolf  in 
his  nature  howling  at  the  dawn  of  consciousness. 
The  first  step  in  consciousness  is  the  realization  that 
there  is  something  in  the  world  besides  yourself  and 
which  carries  with  it  the  recognition  of  the  equal 
right  of  that  something  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pur- 
suit of  happiness.  A  superman  such  as  Nietzsche 
predicted,  a  man  of  superior  intelligence  and  unscru- 
pulously cruel  at  the  same  time,  is  unnatural  and  im- 
possible. After  all,  nature  does  not  make  supermen; 
it  makes  one-sided  men,  and  it  is  by  fitting  the  sides, 
ends,  and  angles  of  men  together  that  we  get  the  su- 
perman or  complete  man. 

To  the  assertion  that  cruelty  is  a  biological  necessity 


ESSAYS    IN   CONSCIOUSNESS  149 

our  answer  is  that  life  is  not  a  necessity  and  is  not 
worth  cruelty. 

Democracy  and  Aristocracy 

Democracy  is  the  highest  political  expression  of  in- 
dividual liberty,  and  if  his  philosophy  were  merely 
the  philosophy  of  egoism  it  would  have  been  to  his 
interest  to  support  and  uphold  it.  It  is  not  so  much 
the  philosophy  of  egoism  as  it  is  of  despotism.  He 
could  not  think  of  individual  expression  except  in  the 
terms  of  domination.  He  had  the  temperament  of  a 
petty  tyrant  or  bully  who  thinks  the  way  to  show  his 
own  importance  is  to  domineer  and  tyrannize  over 
other  people. 

Democracy  provides  the  struggle  necessary  for  the 
development  of  individuality.  It  is  aristocracy  that 
stands  for  suppression  and  is  the  leveler.  It  sup- 
presses, confines,  and  levels  men  into  castes  and  class- 
es, while  in  a  democracy  there  are  as  many  levels  as 
there  are  individuals.  The  equality  of  democracy  is 
merely  the  equality  of  opportunity.  A  pampered  ar- 
istocracy on  the  one  hand  and  an  enslaved  working 
class  on  the  other  means  degeneration  for  both. 
Physical  exercise  and  moral  restraint  are  as  necessary 
for  the  well-being  of  the  aristocrat  as  they  are  for  the 
proletariat. 

He  describes  his  ruling  aristocracy  as  an  aristocracy 
of  birth  and  then  goes  on  to  speak  of  it  as  an  aristoc- 


150    ESSAYS    IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

racy  of  philosophers,  but  it  could  not  be  both.  What 
we  demand  in  an  executive  is  executive  talent,  and  it 
is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  abstract  thinking  of  the 
philosopher  unfits  him  for  practical  affairs.  This  in- 
consistency is  the  result  of  combining  in  his  superman 
what  he  himself  was  with  what  he  wanted  to  be.  He 
thought  of  himself  as  a  philosopher,  and  his  superman 
is,  therefore,  a  philosopher.  But  Nietzsche  was  also 
a  contemptible  snob  with  a  hankering  after  the  title 
and  the  rank  of  the  nobility,  and  his  superman  must, 
also,  be  an  aristocrat. 

The  trend  of  the  world  toward  democracy  and  co- 
operation is  the  natural  and  inevitable  result  of  intel- 
lectual growth  and  enlightenment,  and  Nietzsche  re- 
acted against  it. 

Master-morality  and  Slave-morality 

It  was  not  from  history  that  Nietzsche  derived  his 
idea  that  sympathy  and  pity  are  slave-morality,  but 
from  hie  imagination.  Whenever  the  slave  has  had 
an  opportunity  he  has  shown  himself  to  be  just  as 
cruel  and  vindictive  as  his  master.  The  slave  is  a 
slave  because  of  his  ignorance  and  ignorance  is  always 
cruel  and  must  either  dominate  or  serve.  Slave- 
morality  is  not  sympathy  and  pity,  but  worship  and 
reverence,  and  reverence,  next  to  cruelty,  is  exactly 
what  Nietzsche  most  admires,  not  only  in  the  slave, 
but  in  the  master,  which  goes  to  show  that  master- 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 


morality  and  slave  -morality  are  different  phases  of  the 
same  thing,  the  master  standing  in  the  same  relation 
to  his  king  and  god  that  the  slave  does  to  his  master. 
The  master  is  the  complement  of  the  slave,  and  the 
result  is  not  a  master-morality  and  a  slave-morality, 
but  a  master-and-slave-morality. 

It  is  not  the  sympathy  and  pity  in  Christianity  that 
make  it  a  slave-religion,  but  its  worship  and  reverence. 
Christianity  is  no  more  slave  than  any  other  religion 
since  worship  and  reverence  are  the  ritual  of  all  relig- 
ion. What  little  sympathy  and  pity  there  are  in 
Christianity  are  owing  to  the  growing  consciousness 
of  mankind. 

Reverence  for  one's  self  and  one's  equals  and  con- 
tempt for  everybody  else  —  one  does  not  have  to  be  an 
aristocrat  to  have  that  kind  of  feeling;  all  that  is  nec- 
essary is  to  be  a  prig.  The  difference  between  mas- 
ter-morality and  slave-morality  is  the  difference  be- 
tween prig  and  snob  and  Nietzsche  was  both.  What 
he  describes  as  master-morality  is  the  pride  acid  arro- 
gance of  a  small  mind  in  a  high  position. 

Slavery  and  barbarism  go  together,  and  Nietzsche 
is  the  belated  philosopher  of  barbarism,  the  degen- 
erate philosopher  of  swell-heads,  highwaymen,  and 
cut-throats.  His  thesis,  "Nothing  is  true;  all  things 
are  permissible,"  was  the  creed  of  the  sect  of  Assas- 
sins, who  were  the  terror  of  Syria  in  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  centuries.  It  was  the  savage  in  his  nature 
that  craved  the  excitement  of  danger:  the  freedom  of 


152 ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

the  outlaw  is  danger;  the  freedom  of  civilization  is 
safety.  Tyranny  and  slavery,  cruelty  and  rever- 
ence— this  is  bis  philosopy.  It  is  what  Tamerlane 
practiced  and  what  Nero  might  have  written.  It  is 
like  echoes  of  demoniac  laughter  heard  at  night  around 
the  ruins  of  the  past. 

There  are  two  ways  in  which  a  man  can  get  a  living: 
one  way  is  to  exploit  nature  or  himself  and  the  other 
way  is  to  exploit  the  other  fellow.  And  here  we  get 
the  crux  of  the  whole  matter,  the  tragedy  of  trage- 
dies, the  the  human  tragedy,  the  exploitation  of  man 
by  man. 

His  philosophy  is  limited  to  master  and  slave,  but 
there  is  a  tertium  quid,  a  freeman  who  is  neither  mas- 
ter nor  slave  and  despises  both,  the  modern  man, 
whom  Nietzsche  could  only  rail  at  because  he  could 
not  understand.  It  is  this  man  who  will  make  the 
history  of  the  future,  in  which  there  will  be  neither 
master  nor  slave.  To  get  beyond  the  slave  we  must 
get  beyond  the  master. 

Egotism  and  Ignorance 

Without  sympathy  there  can  be  no  understanding. 
Egotism  limits  a  man  to  himself  and  makes  knowledge 
impossible. 

Nietzsche  was  limited  to  his  talent  and  taste.  He 
had  no  talent  or  taste  for  science,  but  he  could  not 
wholly  ignore  it,  so  he  made  it  his  business  to  belittle 


ESSAYS    IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 153 

it  and  heap  contempt  and  derision  upon  scientists. 
Even  in  philosophy  his  sympathy  did  not  extend 
beyond  his  own  kind  of  philosophy,  the  introspective 
and  inspirational,  and  he  refused  to  recognize  any- 
thing else  as  philosophy.  His  pride  was  a  mark  of 
ignorance,  for  the  wise  man  knows  that  he  has  noth- 
ing to  be  proud  of.  He  shut  himself  up  in  his  con- 
ceit and  was  poisoned  and  driven  mad  by  the  venom 

of  his  own  hatred. 

» 

Dionysian 

Nietzsche  showed  a  sense  for  the  eternal  fitness  of 
things  in  selecting  the  old  mythological  god  of  drunk- 
enness, Dionysos,  and  the  orgies  held  in  his  celebra- 
tion, to  symbolize  his  individual  unrestraint  and  law- 
lessness. His  philosophy  is  indeed  Dionysian. 


"MAN,  THE  ERECT' 

IT  is  written  in  the  Hebrew  religion  that  no  man 
can  look  upon  the  face  of  God  and  live;  and,  in  truth, 
all  religion  is  a  shrinking  from  fact,  an  evasion  that 
does  not  evade.  But  now  that  our  turn  has  arrived, 
let  us  not  kneel  and  cower,  but  stand  up  and  look 
God  in  the  face. 


154  ESSAYS    IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

CARLYLE  AND  HERO-WORSHIP 

HERO-WORSHP  is  the  religion  of  barbarians  and  sav- 
ages. In  a  state  of  barbarism  there  are  no  ideas,  but 
only  persons,  and  the  person  that  can  make  the  great- 
est impression  upon  the  ignorance  and  credulity  of  the 
people,  who  is  usually  the  least  worthy,  is  the  hero. 
But  as  the  people  become  enlightened  and  civilized 
they  begin  to  turn  from  men  to  ideas,  begin  to  look 
within  for  light  and  guidance  and  not  without.  So 
hero-worship  has  been  a  dismal  failure. 

Carlyle's  defense  of  chattel  slavery  was  not  an  inci- 
dent nor  a  vagary,  but  the  complement  of  hero- 
worship.  Worship  implies  tyranny  on  the  one  hand 
and  servility  on  the  other.  No  one  worships  but  a 
slave  and  no  one  but  a  slave  or  a  bully  would  want  to 
be  worshiped. 

Hero-worship  and  reverence — what  an  anachronism! 
The  modern  attitude  toward  the  world  is  neither  rev- 
erence nor  irreverence,  but  curiosity,  and  the  demo- 
cratic attitude  toward  man  is  respect,  riot  reverence. 
We  stand  ready  to  shake  hands  with  the  world,  with 
kings  and  gods,  but  nix  on  the  reverence  and  worship 
business. 

Carlyle  and  Nietzsche,  let  us  hope,  are  the  last  de- 
spairing cries  of  monarchy  and  feudalism  in  Europe. 


ESSAYS    IN   CONSCIOUSNESS  155 

THE  GREAT  MYSTERY 

THE  universe  is  the  Great  Mystery,  and  the  better 
we  understand  it,  the  greater  mystery  it  becomes. 
The  unconscious  know  no  more  of  mystery  than  of 
knowledge  and  are  incapable  of  wonder. 

The  Great  Mystery  cannot  be  apprehended  by  the 
mind  that  can  be  satisfied  with  such  naive  explanation 
as  "God  made.'  There  may  be  mystery  connected 
with  the  belief  in  a  God-made  universe,  but  the  Great 
Mystery  does  not  really  begin  until  we  get  beyond 
the  God-hypothesis.  It  is  to  science,  therefore,  and 
not  to  religion,  that  we  must  go  for  mystery  as  well 
as  knowledge. 

That  mystery  itself  is  not  an  object  of  worship  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  the  men  to  whom  the  uni- 
verse appears  as  the  greater  mystery  have  no  inclina- 
tion to  worship.  It  is  not  mystery  that  men  worship, 
but  gods  and  kings—  fat 


STUDIES  IN  IRRATIONALITY 

THE  tragedies  of  literature  are  largely  the  tragedies 
of  mistake  and  misunderstanding  and  could  with  pro- 
priety be  classed  as  Studies  in  Irrationality.  In  a  ra- 
tional world  the  only  tragedy  would  be  life  itself, which, 
however,  would  probably  become,  in  consequence,  so 
overwhelming  that  life  would  be  unendurable. 


156 ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

CAVEAT  EMPTOR         ; 

SALESMANSHIP  is  the  art  persuasion,  which  means 
to  take  an  unfair  advantage  of  a  mind  that  is  incapable 
of  defending  itself.  It  offers  the  greatest  opportunity 
in  life  for  the  qualities  of  shrewdness  and  cunning, 
and  the  salesman  has  not  been  slow  to  take  advantage 
of  it.  But  set  aside  the  sharp  dealing  of  salesmanship 
and  trade  still  remains  ignoble,  and  this  condition  is 
inevitable  from  its  nature,  the  desire  to  buy  cheap  and 
sell  dear.  He  who  can  stand  at  the  point  of  contact 
between  buyer  and  seller,  where  prices  are  actually 
made^  and  not  despise  himself  and  mankind  is  an  in- 
sensible brute.  Salesmanship  is  the  only  work  that  is 
ignoble,  yet  it  is  the  work  to  which  everyone  aspires. 


BEAUTY  AND  PLEASURE 

BEAUTY  and  pleasure  are  merely  the  means  to  an 
end,  which  is  neither  pleasant  nor  beautiful.  They 
are  the  lure  of  the  gods,  the  bait  in  the  trap  of  life. 
Look  for  the.  flower  tomorrow  and  you  will  find  a  seed; 
for  youth  in  the  arms  of  love  and  you  will  find  a  fam- 
ily of  children.  We  are  enamoured  ot  beauty  and 
pleasure  and  are,  therefore,  miserable.  The  ends  of  life 
are  not  ours.  We  want  no  end,  or,  rather,  we  want 
the  means  to  be  the  end,  sensation  for  its  own  sake. 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS  157 

LIFE 

INSECT,  reptile,  man,  are  different  phases  of  the 
same  thing — life.  It  is  only  an  accident  that  man  is 
not  the  animal  he  butchers  acid  eats.  The  farmer 
driving  his  cattle  to  market  can  say  truly,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  Richard  Baxter:  "There,  but  for  the  grace  of 
God,  go  I." 

He  who  through  the  breeding  of  swine  converts 
the  life -protoplasm  into  the  hog-ego  is  as  vile  and  dis- 
gusting as  the  animals  themselves. 

The  contemplation  of  the  animal  forms  of  life  and 
their  low  states  of  consciousness  is  as  horrible  and  de- 
pressing as  a  nightmare. 


FOOD,  CLOTHING,  AND  SHELTER 

THE  master- workman  said  to  his  men:  ''If  you  will 
give  a  certain  number  of  hours,  or  years,  of  your  life 
to  working  for  food,  clothing,  and  shelter,  you  can 
have  the  remainder  of  the  time  to  live  in. '  But  after 
the  men  had  quit  working  for  food,  clothing,  and  shel- 
ter, they  became  listless  and  dissatisfied,  and  so  went 
back  to  work,  for,  after  all,  food,  clothing,  and  shelter 
was  their  life. 

We  make  vast  preparation  to  live,  but  we  never  get 
beyond  preparation,  food,  clothing,  and  shelter. 


158  ESSAYS   IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 


NATURE 

"I  have  loved  colors,  arid  not  flowers; 

Their  motion,  not  the  swallow's  wings; 
And  wasted  more  than  half  my  hours 

Without  the  comradship  of  things."— Arthur  Symons. 

WE  call  ourselves  nature-lovere  who  have  really 
very  little  love  or  sympathy  for  nature.  We  do  not 
think  of  nature  as  nature,  but  for  ourselves.  We  are 
in  love  with  the  landscape  of  nature,  its  picture,  its 
poetry,  made  beautiful  by  distance.  To  describe  na- 
ture as  beautiful  is  to  admit  that  we  have  never  seen 
it.  We  cannot  feel  for  nature,  frozen  and  broken  in 
the  rock;  we  cannot  see  its  still  struggling  nor  hear  its 
inarticulate  groans.  The  world  seen  through  a  micro- 
scope is  a  squirming  mass  of  legs. 

We  are  most  of  us  like  a  certain  squab-raiser.  He 
said  he  chose  squab-raising  as  a  vocation  because  of 
his  great  love  for  birds.  He  loved  nature  to  breed, 
kill,  and  eat  it.  For  him  who  can  feel  for  animals, 
the  business  of  keeping  them  as  live-stock  is  intol- 
erable. 

We  are  inclined  to  look  upon  the  world  as  made  for 
our  special  use  and  delight,  and  forget  that  while  we 
are  nature,  we  are  only  a  part,  and  that  the  greater 
part  lies  outside  ourselves. 


ESSAYS   IN   CONSCIOUSNESS  159 

PRAGMATISM  AND  TRUTH 

WILLIAM  JAMES  was  right  in  saying  that  philosophy 
is  a  matter  of  temperament,  which  he  divided  into 
"tough-minded"  and  "tender-minded."  By  "tough- 
minded"  he  meant  the.  temperament  that  faces  the 
facts  of  life  regardless  of  how  disagreeable  they  may 
be,  while  by  "tender-minded"  he  meant  the  tempera- 
ment that  shrinks  from  whatever  is  disagreeable  or 
distasteful.  The  first-mentioned  temperament  may 
be  described  as  the  desire-to-know  and  the  second  as 
the  desire-to-get,  or  scientific  and  religious,  respect- 
ively. 

Now,  if  the  desire-to-get  philosopher  can  prove  that 
there  is  no  "know"  outside  of  "get,"  no  knowledge 
outside  of  "use  and  good,  "then  the  argument  of  the 
desire-to-know  philosopher  falls  to  the  ground,  and 
that  is  what  James  attempted  to  do.  He  attempted 
to  make  the  "use  and  good"  of  psychology  the  meas- 
ure of  truth  by  confounding  it  with  the  "use  and 
good"  of  physical  science,  and  thus  giving  it  an  ap- 
pearance of  credibility;  for  the  "use  and  good"  of 
physical  science  is  a  matter  of  fact,  while  the  "use 
and  good"  of  psychology  may  or  may  not  be  a  matter 
of  fact  and  is  often  understood  to  mean  what  cheers 
or  comforts  the  mind. 

To  show  the  unreliabilty  of  the  "use  and  good"  of 
psychology  as  a  measure  of  truth,  let  us  take  the  case 
of  an  invalid  mother  whose  son  had  been  seriously  in- 


l6o  ESSAYS    IN    COKSCIOUSNESS 

jured,  the  knowledge  of  which  would  undoubtedly 
have  had  the  effect  of  making  her  condition  worse, 
and  to  whom  the  nurse,  therefore,  explained  the  ab- 
sence of  the  son  until  the  crisis  was  past  by  invent- 
ing a  falsehood.  Here  "use  and  good"  turns  out  to 
be  a  lie. 

And  by  way  of  further  illustration:  If  a  man  driven 
to  the  wall  by  his  enemy  should  believe  that  friends 
more  powerful  stood  on  the  other  side  ready  to  come 
to  his  aid  at  a  moment's  notice,  although  there  were 
no  friends  nor  help,  would  not  the  mere  belief  have 
the  same  effect  upon  his  mind  as  the  reality  ?  Would 
it  not  make  him  just  as  confident  and  fearless  and 
thus  help  him  to  win  the  battle  that  he  otherwise 
might  lose?  Here,  again,  "use  and  good"  turns  out 
to  be  a  lie.  "Believe  and  thou  shalt  be  saved.'  Man 
is  helped  by  believing  that  he  is  helped.  Delusion 
and  falsehood  oan  make  brave  men  out  of  cowards, 
sober  men  out  of  drunkards,  healthy  people  out  of 
sick  people.  "Evil  will  bless  and  ice  will  burn.' 

The  argument  of  James  is  that  all  we  know  of  facts 
is  "use  and  good"  and  that  this  is  what  we  mean  by 
truth,  but  the  facts  mentioned  are  certainly  known  in 
some  other  way  than  through  the  relation  of  "use 
and  good.'  It  is  an  old  story  in  philosophy  that  all 
we  know  of  reality  is  relation,  but  it  was  left  for 
pragmatism  to  limit  relatioti  to  "use  and  good.' 

James  confounded  the  "suggestion"  of  psychology 
with  the  "fact"  of  physical  science  and  explained  the 


ESSAYS   IN   CONSCIOUSNESS l6l 

latter  in  the  terms  of  the  former,  his  object  being  to 
jolly  the  mind  by  saying  that  what  jollies  the  mind  is 
the  truth. 

"The  true  is  the  useful  and  the  useful  is  the  true." 
To  the  pragmatist,  truth  is  a  very  useful  cow  that 
supplies  him  with  an  abundance  of  milk.  The  dark- 
ened brain  of  the  animal  is  limited  to  use— --it  can  know 
nothing  beyond  it;  but  man — it  is  just  this  that  makes 
him  man,  the  ability  to  rise  beyond  the  personal  meas- 
ure of  use  unto  the  impersonal  measure  of  his  measure. 
"Use"  will  milk  the  cows  and  bring  home  the  day's 
harvest,  but  it  will  not  take  us  to  Heaven  nor  keep 
us  from  death. 

"Facts  are  not  true.'  So  it  follows  that  pragma- 
tism is  not  true  as  a  matter  of  fact,  but  in  pragmatic 
or  Pickwickian  sense. 

James  scorned  the  idea  that  facts  were  something 
for  him  to  agree  with  and  intimated  that  facts  must 
agree  with  him.  In  other  words:  '  'Facts  are  stubborn 
things, '  but  I  am  stubboruer. '  And  while  he  talked 
and  boasted  about  getting  the  best  of  facts,  facts  turn- 
ed on  him  and  ground  him  into  dust. 

James's  friendship  for  facts  was  mere  camouflage. 
He  recognized  them  only  because  he  could  not  avoid 
them  and  feigned  friendship  that  he  might  get  an 
opportunity  to  stab  them  in  tiie  back.  The  only 
thing  that  James  cared  about  was  niinself ,  his  ego.  His 
objection  to  materialism  was  not  that  it  is  not  true, 
but  that 4  'its  sun  sets  in  a  sea  of  disappointment. ' ' 


162 ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

Pragmatism  is  an  attempt  to  steal  the  meaning  of 
the  word  truth  as  applied  to  "fact"  and  apply  it  to 
"use.'  If  this  were  not  the  intention  the  pragmatist 
could  have  no  objection  to  our  saying  what  his  argu- 
ment really  amounts  to,  that  there  is  no  truth,  since 
all  we  mean  by  "truth"  is  "fact."  If  the  definition 
of  truth  as  the  useful  were  not  believed  to  be  true  as 
a  matter  of  fact  it  would  not  be  useful  psychologically, 
would  have  no  pragmatic  value.  In  the  act  of  deny- 
ing that  truth  is  a  matter  of  fact  he  uses  the  word  in 
that  very  sense. 

Pragmatism  is  an  attack  on  truth,  the  latest  attempt 
of  man  to  make  truth  subject  to  his  will.  What  the 
pragmatist  really  means  is  "man,  not  truth" — human- 
ism. He  is  a  special  attorney  for  the  ego  and  his  ar- 
gument is  a  quibble.  With  the  perversity  of  a  child, 
he  has  muddled  the  pools  of  thought  and  tangled  the 
thread  of  existence. 

James  offered  pragmatism  as  a  theory  of  truth  that 
"works,"  but  our  objection  to  it  is  that  it  does  not 
work  as  truth,  but  as  mental  suggestion  in  religion 
and  therapeutics,  which  is  an  entirely  different  thing. 
The  working  theory  of  truth  is  the  objective,  not 
the  subjective;  the  truth  of  science,  not  of  metaphys- 
ics. The  working  theory  of  truth  is  that  everything 
is  related  to  every  other  thing,  and  that  while  this  re- 
lationship is  constantly  changing,  the  law  of  relation- 
ship is  unchanging,  inevitable,  irrevocable;  that  truth 
is  a  law  of  nature,  and  not  a  whim  of  the  human 


BSSAYS   IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 163 

mind;  that  truth  is  discovered,  not  "made.**  We  can 
know  a  thing  to  the  extent  of  its  relationship  with 
other  things,  and  when  a  uew  relation  is  discovered 
our  knowledge  is  modified  to  that  extent.  This  is 
the  explanation  of  the  pragmatic  phrase,  "truth 
grows. ' 

For  those  who  may  object  that  in  defining  truth  in 
the  terms  of  relationship  we  leave  out  things,  we  will 
add:  It  is  relationship  that  determines  whether  a  thing 
shall  be  rock,  tree,  dog,  or  man,  and  with  the  change 
in  relationship  the  thing  that  came  into  existence  with 
it  is  changed  into  some  other  thing.  For  instance, 
sodium  and  chlorine  unite  to  form  salt,  and  when  the 
relationship  is  dissolved  the  thing  salt  disappears,  is 
changed  back  into  sodium  and  chlorine.  So  it  is  im- 
material whether  we  speak  of  truth  in  the  terms  of 
relationship  or  things,  since  things  come  into  existence 
with  change  in  relationship  and  go  out  of  existence 
with  it. 

Pragmatism  is  immensely  popular,  but  the  truth 
will  never  be  popular.  It  is  not  subjective,  but  ob- 
jective; not  man  only,  but  the  world,  also. 


1 64  ESSAYS   IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

REASON  AND  DESIRE 

REASON  is  the  arithmetic  of  consciousness.  It  is 
the  highest  attribute  of  man;  without  it,  he  were  a 
beast.  And  yet  he  has  always  regarded  it  with  sus- 
picion and  distrust. 

The  favorite  argument  of  the  egoist,  or  desire-to-get 
philosopher,  is  his  attempt  to  discredit  the  intellect, 
knowing  that  if  this  were  once  done  he  could  put 
forth  any  fool  doctrine  that  he  might  please  to  put 
forth  without  fear  of  contradiction.  In  the  attempt 
to  prove  his  nobility  man  becomes  ignoble. 

Man  wants  his  delusions  and  illusions,  and  in  the 
white  light  of  reason  he  stands  disillusioned  and  dis- 
appointed. And  this  brings  us  to  faith.  Faith  is 
reason  corrupted  by  desire  or  intimidated  by  fear. 
(When  man  is  not  engaged  in  deceiving  himself  he  is 
busy  deceiving  some  one  else.  Six  days  he  devotes  to 
cheating  his  neighbor  and  one  day  to  cheating  himself. ) 

The  fear  of  knowledge  can  be  traced  and  felt,  like 
a  premonition  of  coming  sorrow,  through  all  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  human  race.  Knowledge  was  the  sin  in 
the  Garden  of  Eden.  And  this  fear  was  not  wholly 
without  reason,  for  knowledge  has  only  confirmed 
the  suspicion  raised  by  death. 

So  long  as  the  known  is  surrounded  by  the  un- 
known, desire  will  have  its  argument.  So  long  as 
there  is  night,  there  will  be  dreams. 


ESSAYS   IN   CONSCIOUSNESS  165 

THE  MORTALITY  OF  THE  EGO 

WE  should  be  doubly  suspicious  of  any  opinion  in 
which  we  have  a  personal  interest;  such  is  immortality. 
As  between  the  man  that  believes  his  desire  and  the 
man  that  does  not,  the  presumption  of  truth  is  in  favor 
of  him  that  does  not,  since  the  bias  of  the  mind  is  al- 
ways on  the  side  of  its  desire. 

The  desire  of  life  is  life,  and  if  this  desire  be  admit- 
ted as  evidence  of  immortality  in  the  case  of  man  it 
must  be  so  admitted  in  respect  to  all  other  forms  of 
life.  But,  in  any  event,  this  desire  is  violated  in 
death,  since  the  desire  is  for  life  now  and  here  and 
not  otherwise.  This  desire  is  explained  in  the  tend- 
ency of  a  thing  once  started  in  motion  to  continue  in 
the  same  direction  forever,  a  tendency,  however, 
which  is  always  defeated.  To  say  that  the  ego  is  im- 
mortal is  to  say  that  a  phase  of  motion  is  immortal, 
which  is  incredible. 

It  is  not  an  accident  that  consciousness  is  found 
only  in  connection  with  protoplasm.  Consciousness 
is  so  closely  related  to  the  physical  body  that  we  can- 
not even  rest  the  body  without  becoming  unconscious. 
Since  we  cannot  even  rest  without  becoming  uncon- 
scious, why  should  we  expect  it  to  be  otherwise  when 
we  shall  be  entirely  worn  out,  broken  and  dispersed  ? 

A  man  would  cot  breed  if  he  himself  were  immor- 
tal, for  it  would  not  be  necessary.  As  the  plant  pro- 
duces its  seed  against  its  death,  so  man,  the  child. 


166  ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

Individuals  are  never  found  alone,  nor  can  they  live 
alone,  but  they  live  through  one  another  and  in  num- 
bers and  repetition.  The  individual  is  net  a  finished 
product,  nor  a  thing  per  se,  but  merely  a  phase  of 
growth  or  change  from  one  condition  to  another,  the 
child  of  yesterday,  the  parent  of  tomorrow.  Birth  is 
a  reaching  out  and  death  a  process  of  elimination. 
The  individual  is  the  body;  humanity,  the  soul.  It 
is  the  law  of  change  and  growth  that  has  made  im- 
mortality impossible,  a  god  unnecessary,  and  keeps 
the  world  forever  young  and  fresh. 

The  individual  is  not  even  an  individual  in  the 
sense  of  oneness,  but  is  a  compound  built  up  of  many 
individual  cells.  It  is  the  most  fragile  thing  in  the 
universe  and,  when  once  broken,  can  never  be  re- 
stored, as  weak  as  flesh,  as  brief  as  life. 

But  the  greatest  argument  against  the  immortality 
of  man  is  man  himself.  When  I  read  the  terrible 
history  of  mankind  I  feel  relieved  to  know  that  the 
dead  are  safely  dead.  Man's  boast  of  immortal  im- 
portance is  as  absurd  as  his  life  is  petty  and  sordid. 
The  hope  and  salvation  of  humanity  is  not  in  the 
preservation  and  immortality  of  the  ego,  but  in  its 
evolution  through  life  into  higher  and  nobler  forms. 
JJfe  itself  may  be  immortal,  but  not  the  life  of  John 
Smith  or  Bill  Jones.  Nature  has  gone  as  far  as  she 
can  in  you — "ye  must  be  born  again.' 

Death  is  the  tragedy  of  the  individual,  but  even 
tragedy  has  its  compensations.  The  knowledge  that 


BS8AYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 167 

life  is  a  tragedy  and  that  we  are  the  actors  can  fill  us 
with  emotion  that  is  not  wholly  unpleasant.  But 
however  that  may  be,  let  us  act  up  to  the  tragedy;  let 
us  not  turn  it  into  a  farce  by  playing  at  make-believe. 


RELIGION  AND  WOMAN 

WOMEN  have  given  to  religion  their  affection  and 
solicitude,  have  made  it  the  medium  of  their  thought 
and  aspiration  so  long,  that  for  us  it  has  the  features 
of  our  mothers,  sisters,  wives,  and  it  is,  therefore, 
almost  impossible  for  us  to  consider  it  intelligently. 
Ah,  woman  !  woman  !  you  make  us  men  and  then  you 
unmake  us  with  your  sentimentality  and  irrationality. 


OPTIMISM 

"GoD's  in  his  Heaven — all's  right  with  the  world." 
In  other  words,  the  East  End  of  London  is  all  right 
and  should  remain  the  East  End  of  London;  social  in- 
injustice,  child-degradation,  and  beer-squalor  are  all 
right  and  should  continue  just  as  they  are.  And  this 
is  optimism — optimism  indeed  that  turns  God  into  a 
devil  and  leaves  the  world  without  hope  !  There  is 
no  pessinist  like  your  optimist. 


1 68 ESSAYS   IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

THE  VITAL  ELEMENT  IN  RELIGION 

THE  vital  element  in  religion  is  the  belief  in  a  help- 
ing God,  and  it  is  this  belief,  and  not  God,  that  helps 
and  saves  men  from  evil  passions  and  habit-forming 
drugs.  The  faith  of  Christianity  is  similar  to  sugges- 
tion in  hypnotism.  In  religious  conversion  the  indi- 
vidual passes  through  an  emotional  experience  in  which 
the  mind  is  hypnotized  by  suggestion.  "He  [Jesus] 
could  there  do  no  mighty  work  because  of  their  unbe- 
lief. "  This  is  the  language  of  hypnotism. 

But  how  weak  must  be  that  life  that  turns  to  false- 
hood for  consolation  and  support  !  And  the  good  is 
more  than  offset  by  the  evil  that  follows  from  believ- 
ing that  which  is  not  true.  The  faith  of  the  Christian 
is  in  the  God  of  the  Church,  and  that  the  Bible,  the 
work  of  a  barbarous  age,  is  his  written  law  or  guide; 
and  the  result  is  that  this  faith  has  always  fought,  and 
is  still  fighting,  the  scientific  advancement  and  amel- 
ioration of  humanity. 

Let  us  make  arid  enforce  laws  against  habit-forming 
drugs  so  that  the  habit  will  not  be  formed  in  the  first 
place,  and  then  we  shall  need  no  God  to  save  us  from 
them.  Since  there  is  no  God  to  love  and  help  us  so 
much  the  more  necessary  it  is  that  we  love  and  help 
one  another.  In  our  loss  of  a  personal  God  let  us 
hope  we  may  be  drawn  together  in  closer  union  and 
brotherhood. 


ESSAYS   IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 169 

.  TREES  AND  IDEAS 

,-,  "A  TREE  is  known  by  its  fruit,"  but  not  an  idea. 
It  would  be  impossible  to  form  a  definite  conception 
of  Christianity  from  its  "fruit. "  The  Jesuits  believed 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  love,  and  Europe  suffered 
the  horrors  of  the  Inquisition.  The  people  of  the 
French  Revolution  believed  in  liberty,  equality,  and 
fraternity,  and  the  result  was  the  Red  Terror. 

.  The  effect  (fruit)  of  an  idea  upon  the  mind  is  not 
determined  by  the  idea,  but  by  the  consciousness  of 
the. mind  in  which  it  finds  lodgment.  So  we  see  that 
ideas- cannot  reform  the  world,  except  indirectly,  by 
helping  to  reform  the  mind. 


RELIGION  AND  MORALITY 

A  MORAL  religion  probably  does  more  harm  than 
if  it  were  immoral,  because  it  brings  discredit  upon 
morality.  "If  we  delude  our  children  with  pious  fa- 
ble," wrote  Plato,  "is  it  not  possible  that  when  they 
come  to  discard  the  fable  they  may  also  discard  the 
truth  that  is  taught  with  it  ?"  And  this  is  not  merely 
a  possibility;  it  happens  every.  It  has  ruined  the 
lives  of  unnumbered  thousands. 


170  ESSAYS    IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

CHRIST  AND  CONVENTIONAL  RELIGION 

CHRIST  had  the  greatest  aversion,  apparently,  for 
the  scribes  and  Pharisees.  "Except  your  righteous- 
ness shall  exceed  the  righteousness  of  the  scribes  and 
Pharisees,  ye  shall  in  no  case  enter  into  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven."  "Ye  serpents,  ye  generation  of  vipers, 
how  can  ye  escape  the  damnation  of  Hell?"  Now, 
the  scribes  and  Pharisees  were  the  orthodox  people 
of  that  day  just  as  the  Christians  are  the  orthodox 
people  of  today.  They  were  eminently  respectable, 
the  upholders  and  expounders  of  law,  convention,  and 
fig-leaf  morality.  His  fiery  denunciation  of  scribes 
and  Pharisees  must  have  surprised  and  puzzled  many 
a  good  Christian  that  has  turned  to  history  to  learn 
what  particular  wickedness  the  scribes  and  Pharisees 
were  up  to  only  to  find  that  they  were  people  very 
much  like  himself.  Indeed,  some  of  the  Christian 
commetators  speak  with  an  injured  air  about  it.  One 
says:  'It  is  an  obvious  injustice. "  Another  naively 
says:  ' 'Christian  practice  is,  on  the  whole,  in  favor  of 
the  Pharisee." 

The  explanation  is  to  be  found  in  the  sentence, 
uHe  spoke  as  one  having  authority,  and  not  as  the 
scribes  and  Pharisees."  But  Christians  never  speak 
as  having  authority;  they  speak  as  the  scribes  and 
Pharisees.  Christ  was  the  kind  of  man  that  never 
subscribes  to  any  creed  except  his  own,  and  that  is 
why  no  Christian  can  ever  be  like  Christ. 


ESSAYS   IN    CONSCIOUSNESS  IJ1 

Men  may  be  divided  into  two  classes:  thinkers  and 
believers,  believers  of  what  somebody  else  has  thought. 
Christ  was  a  thinker,  and  came  in  conflict  with  the 
believers  of  his  day,  the  scribes  and  Pharisees.  "Woe 
unto  ye,  scribes  and  Pharisees  !'  In  other  words, 
woe  unto  ritualism,  dogma,  tradition  !  But  the  tables 
are  now  turned  and  the  religion  of  Christ  himself  has 
become  a  convention  and  the  Christians  are  the  scribes 
and  Pharisees  of  today. 

Christ  revolted  as  an  individual  thinker  against  con- 
ventional or  organized  religion.  The  only  use  for  the 
Old  Testament  in  the  study  of  Christ  is  to  show  what 
he  reacted  against.  Take,  for  instance,  the  story  of 
the  Pharisee  who  made  long,  formal  prayers  and  the 
publican  who  stood  afar  off  and  smote  his  hand  upon 
his  breast,  saying,  "Lord,  be  merciful  to  me,  a  sin- 
ner !"  Now,  if  the  prayer  of  the  publican  were  cop- 
ied by  the  Christian  and  repeated  day  after  day,  it 
would  degenerate  into  a  ceremony  and  be  no  better 
than  the  prayer  of  the  Pharisee.  Its  merit  was  in  its 
spontaneity  and  sincerity,  that  it  was  the  expression 
of  the  individual  himself — in  a  word,  that  it  was  not 
conventional  religion.  The  religion  of  Chriht  is  per- 
sonal, the  religion  of  Christ  himself,  and  to  attempt 
to  formulate  it  into  a  creed  or  to  organize  it  into  a  sect 
is  to  lose  it. 

Is  it  not  strange  that  the  Christians  should  have 
adopted  the  old  Jewish  Sabbath  when  the  only  refer- 
ence Christ  made  to  the  Sabbath  was  to  break  it  ? — 


[72  ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

the  work  of  scribes  and  Pharisees,  surely. 

After  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  the  rich  man  came 
in  for  the  condemnation  of  Christ,  not  for  any  special 
wickedness,  but  because  he  was  rich.  "Blessed  are 
ye  poor,  for  yours  is  the  Kingdom  of  God."  — "but 
woe  unto  ye  that  are  rich,  for  ye  have  received  your 
consolation  !"  The  Christians  seem  to  think  there 
must  be  some  mistake  about  these  and  similar  utter- 
ances and  have  attempted  to  explain  them  away.  But 
is  not  this  pretty  much  what  we  might  expect  from 
one  who  had  not  where  to  lay  his  head  ?  And  is  not 
the  fact  that  the  rich  man  remains  rich  amid  the  pov- 
erty and  destitution  of  his  reighbors  good  evidence 
that  he  does  not  love  his  neighbor  as  himself  ?  Christ 
was  a  social  outcast  and  n on -conformist  and  his  relig- 
ion is  the  religion  of  the  social  outcast  and  non-con- 
formist, and  the  attempt  to  convert  it  into  a  religion 
for  business  men  and  society  women  is  ridiculous, 
4 'The  whirligig  of  time  brings  in  its  revenges,'  and 
the  social  outcast  is  now  the  Lord  of  society  and  the 
non -conformist  is  the  God  of  conformity. 

All  religion  begins  as  heterodoxy  and  becomes  or- 
thodoxy when  it  falls  into  the  hands  of  the  mob  and 
becomes  a  convention.  Christ  was  heterodox;  the 
Christian  is  orthodox.  Heterodoxy  is  thought  orig- 
inal, individual,  genuiue;  while  orthodoxy  is  a  base 
imitation  of  heterodoxy,  a  counterfeit. 


ESSAYS   IN    CONSCIOUSNESS  173 

CREATION  AND  EVOLUTION 

EVERY  individual  is  a  new  creation  to  the  extent  of 
his  difference  from  every  other  individual.  The  child 
stands  not  only  in  the  succession,  but  in  the  evolution. 
Man  is  not  made,  but  in  the  making.  Variation  is  the 
greatest  fact  in  nature.  Life  is  being  constantly  crea- 
ted before  our  eyes,  and  always  unconsciously,  and  it 
is  the  destiny  of  the  child  to  break  his  parents'  hearts 
by  growing  beyond  them.  The  act  of  creation,  or 
procreation,  is  a  thing  of  instinct,  of  passion,  the  de- 
lirium of  desire  and  unreason. 

Evolution  is  from  the  simple  to  the  complex,  from 
gas  to  solids,  from  sensation  to  consciousness,  and  if 
there  is  a  higher  intelligence  than  man  in  the  universe 
it  must  be  in  a  higher  stage  of  evolution,  not  in  a  low- 
er or  primary  stage,  not  in  a  First  Cause.  Evolution 
has  made  it  possible  for  the  created  to  be  greater  than 
the  creator.  Sensation  and  action  came  before  thought 
and  God  is  the  end,  not  the  beginning,  of  life. 


"THE  REST  IS  SILENCE" 

THE  babbler  wearies  us  with  iteration,  but  when  he 
lies  still  in  death,  silent  at  last,  his  silence  impresses 
us  as  his  babble  never  did  and  moves  us  to  tears — no 
longer  dull  and  commonplace,  but  pathetic,  eloquent. 


174  ESSAYS    IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

THE  HOPE  OF  THE  WORLD 

THE  life  of  man  is  expressed  in  the  terms  of  a  metal, 
as  hard  and  unfeeling  as  the  metal  itself.  Life  itself 
is  for  him  the  abstract,  the  incomprehensible,  and  he 
can  only  apprehend  it  through  the  medium  of  a  con- 
vention or  symbol,  and  he  ends  by  mistaking  the  sym- 
bol for  the  thing  symbolized.  The  hope  of  the  race 
is  not  in  the  immortality  of  the  ego,  but  in  its  evolu- 
tion. The  hope  of  the  world,  the  goal  of  life,  is  con- 
sciousness. Man  owes  as  much  to  death  as  to  life,  for, 
without  death,  the  death  of  innumerable  lower  forms 
of  life,  he  could  not  have  come  into  existence.  Death 
and  birth  are  the  great  reformation,  death  that  ends 
the  present  and  birth  that  ushers  in  the  future. 

We  have  hardly  begun  to  live  as  a  race.  We  are 
only  in  the  dawn  of  consciousness,  intellectual  child- 
hood. Even  the  words  with  which  we  try  to  express 
ourselves  are  words  of  anticipation — civilization,  soul. 
We  have  come  up  from  the  primeval  mud  past  the  lair 
of  the  beast  and  are  on  the  way  to  the  house  of  man. 
Life  is  the  fountain  of  youth  and  every  generation  we 
renew  ourselves  in  the  bath  of  birth.  The  man-ego 
was  alive  in  prehistoric  time  and  it  lives  in  us  today. 
It  has  never  died.  It  sloughs  off  the  individual  as 
the  snake  casts  its  last  year's  skin  and  lives  on  through 
the  centuries  and  cycles  of  change. 


ES6AYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 175 

INTOLERANCE 

CHRISTIANITY  serves  to  strengthen  and  confirm  the 
individual  in  his  prejudices  by  putting  divine  approval 
upon  them.  What  was  merely  opinion  becomes  the 
word  of  God,  which  all  men  are  bound  to  believe  and 
obey.  It  is  no  longer  a  question  for  rational  consider- 
ation or  discussion,  but  it  is  a  case  of  believe  or  be 
damned.  It  answers  argument  with  threat  and  curses. 
It  "set  a  man  at  variance  against  his  father,  a  daugh- 
ter against  her  mother, '  and  turned  Europe  into  a 
slaughter-house. 

"Liberty  of  thought  .  .  .  this  conclusion,  so  far  as 
I  can  judge,  is  the  most  important  ever  reached  by 
man,"  said  Lord  Acton.  And  this  most  important 
conclusion  ever  reached  by  man  was  fought  bitterly 
by  the  Christian  Church  with  every  physical  torture 
that  a  diabolical  imagination  could  invent  or  hate  and 
cruelty  could  inflict.  It  forged  the  chains  of  intellect- 
ual slavery  and  dragged  the  intellect  in  triumph  before 
its  gibbering  votaries.  The  history  of  civilization  in 
Europe  is  the  history  of  the  struggle  between  science 
and  Christianity.  The  Church  has  fought  on  the  los- 
ing side  for  a  thousand  years.  It  has  done  everything  it 
could  to  quench  the  only  divine  spark  in  life — intellect. 

Were  I  a  Christian  in  fact,  I  could  not  endure  to  be  so 
in  name,  a  name  that  has  condoned  every  crime  and 
that  is  polluted  with  the  blood  of  the  innocent.  It 
hangs  like  a  fog  on  the  intellectual  horizon  and  the 
meridian  of  Christianity  is  known  as  the  Dark  Ages. 


176  ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

"THE  FEAR  OF  GOD" 

IN  the  words  of  Elbert  Hubbard,  "The  Christian 
Church  has  capitalized  fear. '  It  has  materialized  the 
suffering  resulting  from  the  violation  of  the  laws  of 
nature  into  a  place  of  eternal  torment.  It  has  invest- 
ed death  with  new  terror,  invented  a  Hell  that  can 
serve  no  purpose  except  revenge. 

He  who  is  converted  to  Christianity  through  fear  is 
not  likely  to  lose  it  in  becoming  a  Christian.  Fear 
acts  as  a  poison  in  the  human  system  and  the  preach- 
ing of  fear  is  a  crime  against  humanity. 

It  is  true  that  there  is  no  pity  in  nature,  that  the 
laws  of  nature  are  inexorable  and  irrevocable;  but 
when  we  resort  to  personification  the  blank  face  of 
nature  takes  on  the  grin  of  a  fiend  and  the  inexorable 
and  irrevocable  become  the  malignant  and  implacable. 
It  is  the  business  of  science  to  exorcise  the  spirits 
raised  by  the  imagination  and  lead  us  back  to  an  im- 
personal nature.  The  Christian  is  hag-ridden  by  a 
metaphor. 

SKEPTICISM 

"IF  I  doubted  Christianity,  fear  would  make  me  a 
Christian."  The  skeptics  are  all  in  the  Church. 
Doubt  that  does  not  lead  to  belief  ends  in  the  doubt 
of  doubt;  so  the  mere  doubter  goes  around  in  a  circle 
and  comes  back  to  the  point  from  which  he  started. 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS  177 

A  DEMOCRACY  AFRAID  OF  ITSELF 

THE  United  States  is  a  democracy  that  is  afraid  of 
democracy.      While  the  constitution  confers  equal  suf- 
frage, it  puts  a  check  upon  it  by  making  it  as  difficult 
as  possible  to  make  new   laws.     The  two  houses  of 
the    English   Parliament,   after  which   our  Congress 
was  modeled,  represent  the  two  classes  in  a  monarchy, 
lords  and  commons,  but  two  houses  in  a  democratic 
congress  serve  no  purpose  except  to  hinder  legislation. 
The  belief  that  the  senators  represent  the  states  and 
the  representatives  the  people  is  a  fiction;  their  duties 
are  identical;  the  state  cannot  be  separated  from  the 
people.     When  legislation  succeeds  in  passing  through 
both  houses  of  Congress  and  is  signed   by   the  presi- 
dent, it  can  still  be  defeated  by   the   Supreme  Court 
judges,  who  are  appointed  for  life  by   the  president, 
and  are  thus  removed  as  far  as  possible  from  the  peo- 
ple.    The  senators,  instead  of  being   elected   for  the 
same  term  as  the  president,  are  elected  for  six  years, 
one-third  of  the  number  retiring  every  two  years,    so 
that  it  often  happens  in   a  presidential  election   that 
the  defeated  party  retains  a  majority   in   the  senate, 
which  results  in  a  presidential  administration  without 
any  definite  policy  and  a  government  that  works  with 
the  greatest  difficulty. 

Are  these  checks  really  necessary  ?  Shall  we  never 
have  enough  confidence  in  our  own  form  of  govern- 
ment to  make  a  working  government  out  of  it  instead 
of  one  that  remains  impasse  half  the  time  ? 


178  ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

THE  HUMAN  REVOLT 

THE  people  of  the  Kingdom  of  Life  are  in  rebellion. 
They  declare  against  the  laws  of  life  and  challenge 
their  God  to  battle.  They  throw  their  spears  at  the 
sun  and  fight  against  the  moon.  They  demand  that 
the  wheels  of  time  be  stayed,  that  today  endure  for- 
ever. They  want  the  sweet  without  the  bitter,  the 
good  without  the  evil,  life  without  death,  motion 
without  change. 

They  cry  in  vain  to  an  unapproachable  God  seated 
on  his  Throne  of  Indifference.  They  are  caught,  and 
crushed,  and  ground  in  the  revolving  wheels  of  chance 
and  change  forever  and  the  earth  resounds  with  their 
lamentations. 


IMAGINATION  AND  DESIRE 

THE  child  spends  his  life  at  play,  in  an  imaginary 
world.  In  the  man  he  starts  out  to  make  his  dreams  and 
desires  come  true,  and  the  desires  that  are  unrealized 
and  unrealizable,  repressed  desires,  find  vent  in  imagi- 
nation, but  he  no  longer  calls  it  play,  but  religion,  art. 

What  is  God  but  the  personification  of  the  will  of 
the  individual  ?  What  is  soul  but  the  personification 
of  his  desire  ?  What  is  salvation  but  the  salvation  of 
the  desire  by  the  will  ?  What  is  religion,  after  all, 
but  the  imagination  of  repressed  desire  ? 


ESSAYS   IN    CONSCIOUSNESS  179 

THE  SUPERNATURAL 

A  BELIEF  in  the  supernatural  presupposes  a  nature 
outside  of  nature,  that  nature  is  not  creative  and  suf- 
fient  unto  itself,  but  inert,  mechanical,  dead,  and  im- 
possible without  an  outside  and  greater  nature.  Man 
lives  too  near  God  to  recognize  and  reverence  him  and 
so  runs  after  false  gods.  Earth  is  merely  earth  to 
them  that  live  upon  it;  ten  million  miles  away  it  is  a 
brilliant  star. 

When  we  discover  the  Jaw  of  what  is  called  the 
supernatural,  when  it  becomes  capable  of  explanation, 
it  is  no  longer  the  supernatural,  but  the  natural. 

A  METAPHYSICAL  DREAM 

I  FEU*  asleep  while  reading  German  metaphysics, 
and  I  dreamt  I  heard  the  mirrors  in  the  room  learn- 
edly discussing  the  nature  of  man  and  what  came 
within  the  range  of  their  vision,  and  the  only  thing 
they  seemed  to  be  in  any  sense  agreed  upon  was: 
"Man  is  my  idea." 

HEALTH  AND  DECEIT 

CHRISTIAN  SCIENCE  is  the  science  of  self-deception. 
The  beneficial  effect  is  derived  from  the  self-deception 
of  mental  suggestion.  The  problem  for  the  future  will 
be,  how  to  be  healthy  and  happy  without  making 
a  fool  of  one's  self  ? 


l8o ESSAYS   IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

POETRY 

POETRY  is  emotion,  with  an  aesthetic  thrill,  com- 
municated in  words.  Thoughts  that  stated  in  prose 
would  be  depressing  or  absurd  in  poetry  thrill  us  with 
pleasure.  The  pessimism  in  the  poetry  of  James 
Thomson  (B.  V.)  and  the  absurdity  in  the  poetry  of 
Francis  Thompson  are  as  thrillingly  beautiful  as  the 
optimism  in  Browning  or  the  romanticism  in  Keats. 
The  poet  turns  his  grief  into  poetry  and  it  is  no  long- 
er grief,  but  a  joy  forever. 

The  fault  is  not  in  the  poetry,  but  in  ourselves,  that 
what  was  an  inspiration  yesterday  may  have  no  effect 
upon  us  today;  and  the  fact  that  we  felt  the  inspiration 
yesterday  is  proof  that  it  is  still  there  and  that  others 
like  ourselves  will  feel  it  in  the  years  to  come.  If 
my  verse  shall  move  the  reader  to  praise  it  once,  I 
care  not  what  he  may  say  afterwards. 


IN  MY  GARDEN 

I  TAKK  refuge  in  my  garden  from  the  pain  and  suf- 
fering of  animal  life.  I  find  companionship  in  the 
silence  of  the  plants  and  cooling  is  the  touch  of  their 
leaves  to  my  fevered  brow.  The  rose  is  a  sleeping 
beauty  and  I  am  her  lover,  but  I  have  no  desire  to 
play  the  fairy  prince  and  awaken  her  with  a  kiss. 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS l8l 

A  PLEA  FOR  THE  WORST  BOOKS 

A  LIBRARY  of  the  best  books  is  not  the  best  library. 
The  best  library  is  not  a  selection,  but  a  collection, 
impartial,  uncritical.  Au  hour  devoted  to  the  worst 
books,  a  sentence  here  and  there,  a  paragraph  or  two, 
is  a  stimulus  to  the  imagination,  and  when  we  go 
back  to  the  best  books  they  glow  with  added  luster 
and  we  understand  many  things  that  escaped  us  be- 
fore. Wiien  Paul  '  'determined  to  know  nothing  but 
Jesus  and  him  crucified,"  he  shut  himself  out  from 
knowing  even  that.  We  can  only  arrive  at  knowl- 
edge after  infinite  comparison.  ''Beware  of  the  man 
of  one  book,"  for  he  is  a  dangerous  fanatic. 


POETS,  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

THE  modern  poets  appeal  to  me  as  those  of  the  past 
do  not.  They  are  my  poets  because  they  have  the 
mind,  accent,  and  flavor  of  the  age.  I  maintain  that 
the  age  that  is  conscious  will  recognize  and  delight 
in  its  soul  while  living  and  present,  and  not  merely  ill 
retrospect,  dead  and  past.  I  maintain  that  the  poet 
that  misses  the  ear  of  his  age  misses  the  audience  for 
which  his  poetry  was  intended  and  that  it  can  never 
be  so  thoroughly  enjoyed  by  any  other. 


1 82         ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

WORKING  FOR  WAGES 

FOR  the  employe,  it  is  often  not  a  question  of 
whether  his  work  is  right  or  wrong,  but  what  the 
boss  thinks  about  it,  which  is  demoralizing.  And  all 
dependence  and  servitude  are  demoralizing.  Econom- 
ic freedom  is  as  essential  in  the  life  of  the  individual 
as  political  freedom.  Wages  are  tolerable  only  in  so 
far  as  they  are  capable  of  making  one  independent  of 
wages. 

The  evil  of  machinery  is  wage-slavery,  and  one  of 
the  problems  of  the  future  will  be,  how  to  get  the  full 
benefit  of  our  mechanical  inventions  without  the  de- 
moralization of  wage-slavery  ? 

I  must  do  my  own  work,  not  somebody  else's. 
Wages  is  the  price  the  devil  pays  for  a  man's  soul. 


THE  REFORMER 

"Occasional  windows  have  been  raised,  with  vistas  of  far  and   fair   coun- 
tries and  breaths  of  brave  mornings." — Herron. 

IN  the  future,  not  the  past,  is  the  land  of  romance 
and  the  reformer  is  the  knight-errant.  Dream-inspired, 
he  calls  to  noble  strife  and  leads  into  tomorrow. 
So  long  as  there  is  injustice  or  suffering  in  the  world, 
he  will  never  be  for  the  thing  that  is. 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS  183 

THE  CIGAR-HERO 

THE  hero  of  the  popular  American  novel  is  usually 
depicted  as  an  embodiment  of  the  Will  to  Power  with 
a  cigar  in  its  mouth.  But  the  cigar  makes  us  doubt 
that  the  will  is  as  strong  as  the  novelist  would  have  us 
believe,  for  tobacco-smoking  is  a  yielding  of  will  to  a 
habit-forming  drug,  a  yielding  of  life  to  the  forces  of 
death,  and  however  little,  it  is  a  yielding.  It  is  a 
case  of  will  all  right,  but  it  is  a  will  on  fire.  The  fire 
goes  out  at  times,  but  it  is  always  relighted  at  the 
pauses  in  the  conversation. 

The  moods  and  emotions  of  the  cigar-hero  are  mi- 
nutely and  accurately  indicated  by  the  manner  of  his 
smoking.  The  story  is  of  striving  and  accomplish- 
ment, while  the  smoke  of  a  smouldering  fire,  so  small 
that  one  heeds,  arises  in  faint  rings  and  winds  through 
the  story,  a  portent  of  disaster,  a  story  within  a 
story — the  smoke  of  a  smouldering  fire. 

THE  PENITENTIARY 

IT  stands  in  center  of  the  state,  the  gray  stone 
walls  of  the  penitentiary,  bleak,  massive,  forbidding, 
high  walls  that  shut  out  the  sky,  reach  down  to  hell, 
and  cast  a  shadow  across  the  world.  It  is  here  that 

• 

society  imprisons  its  derelicts  and  delinquents.  These 
walls  are  the  walls  of  society.  (But  are  they  the 
walls  of  society  ?) 


1 84  ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

MARRIAGE 

MARRIAGE  is  a  co-partnership  contract.  The  con- 
sideration is  love  and,  like  the  nominal  dollar  of  con- 
tracts, is  merely  for  the  purpose  of  binding  the  con- 
tract. The  business  to  be  conducted  is  life,  but  not 
the  life  of  the  co-partners,  but  that  of  a  third  party, 
the  child. 

Marriage  is  a  sacrifice;  procreation  is  not  the  bus- 
iness of  tbe  individual,  but  of  the  species.  We  would 
fain  get  beyond  sacrifice,  but  it  is  impossible;  our  very 
instincts  delude  and  betray  us. 


EXPLANATION 

I  WAS  asked  to  explain  myself  end  I  meditated 
what  I  should  say.  First,  I  brought  to  mind  certain 
things  that  I  thought  might  be  an  explanation,  but 
when  I  had  considered  them,  I  found  that  they  were 
modified  by  others,  and,  after  further  consideration, 
I  found  that  these  others  were  modified  by  still 
others,  and  so  on.  In  the  end,  I  said,  "I  have  noth- 
ing to  say." 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS  185 


WAR-NOTES 


WAR  AND  CONSCIOUSNESS 

THE  war  has  awakened  in  the  citizen  the  latent 
spirit  of  social  service,  which  gives  him  a  feeling  of 
complacency  and  self-righteousness,  and  which  finds 
expression  in  numerous  essays,  novels,  and  dramas. 
But,  after  all,  it  only  helps  to  prolong  the  struggle 
and  adds  to  its  intensity  and  destructiveness.  We 
have  all  the  virtues  there  are,  loyalty,  courage,  sacri- 
fice; but,  in  our  hands,  they  turn  into  hatred,  cruelty, 
murder.  We  have  all  the  virtues  there  are,  but  we 
lack  the  intelligence  to  use  them.  Social  service  it 
seems  to  the  men  behind  the  guns,  but  to  the  men, 
women,  and  children  in  front  it  looks  like  devils'  work. 

The  death  and  destruction  of  war  have  awakened 
in  the  people,  the  spirit  of  social  service,  something 
that  life  could  never  do.  Their  sentiments  and  emo- 
tions have  been  touched  by  the  gross,  brutal,  obvious 
acts  of  war,  while  the  finer  issues  of  peaceful,  un- 
eventful life  escape  them  entirely.  They  do  not  ral- 
ly to  the  defense  of  life — it  is  too  tame;  only  death  can 
excite  their  imagination.  We  make  a  bungle  of  liv- 
ing, but  we  are  great  at  dying. 


1 86 ESSAYS   IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

If  the  soldiers  engaged  in  the  war  and  the  men  who 
are  responsible  for  it  are  conscious  of  their  actions, 
then  we  have  no  reason  to  believe  that  there  will  not 
always  be  men  who,  like  them,  will  resort  to  the  mur- 
der and  destruction  of  war.  The  only  hope  of  a  bet- 
ter world  is  in  the  belief  that  these  men  are  uncon- 
scious, that  conscious  life  does  not  act  in  this  manner 
and  that  consciousness  is  a  matter  of  evolution. 

War  has  been  described  as  "a  necessary  condition 
of  growth.'  It  is  true  that  there  can  be  no  progress 
without  the  war  of  ideas.  The  pre-eminence  of  Europe 
is  not  the  result  of  its  bloody  battles,  but  of  the  con- 
flict of  ideas  that  produced  them.  China  came  to  a 
standstill  for  the  want  of  ideas.  The  test  of  civiliza- 
tion is  just  this:  the  ability  to  transfer  the  battlefield 
from  the  body  to  the  mind.  When  we  can  fight 
without  killing  one  another,  then  we  may  indeed  call 
ourselves  civilized. 


THE  tragedies  of  war  are  many,  but  there  are  two 
that  deserve  special  mention:  the  tragedy  of  the 
young  men  willing  and  eager  to  do  something  worth 
while,  and  the  best  they  can  do  is  to  murder  one  an- 
other: the  tragedy  of  the  individual  who,  as  a  mem- 
ber of  society,  is  compelled  to  fight  and  die  in  what 
he  believes  to  be  a  useless  or  unjust  war. 


ESSAYS   IN    CONSCIOUSNESS  1 87 

ARMS  AND  THE  FOOL 

"THE  war  has  vindicated  melodrama,"  writes  a 
dramatic  critic.  It  has  given  us  the  material  of  mel- 
odrama, it  is  true,  but  not  the  conventional  stage 
motif,  the  struggle  between  good  and  evil,  hero  and 
villain.  It  is  melodrama  without  a  villain,  for  the 
combatants  are  fighting  for  the  same  thing,  patriotism 
and  right.  Vast  bodies  of  people  are  impelled  by  like 
motives  to  mutual  destruction.  With  the  best  inten- 
tions in  the  world,  they  murder  one  another  without 
quarter  and  without  compunction.  They  commit  acts 
of  villainy  without  being  villains  and  rise  to  heights 
of  courage  and  sacrifice  without  being  heroes.  In 
the  tragedy  of  life  there  is  neither  hero  nor  villain, 
but  only  fool  !  fool  !  fool !  The  war  can  be  summed 
up  in  four  words,  Arms  and  the  Fool ! 

Heaven  and  Hell  are  for  the  righteous  and  wicked, 
respectively,  but  the  fool  is  neither,  unworthy  Heav- 
en, not  worthy  even  of  Hell. 


LITERARY  writers  are  seriously  discussing  the  ques- 
tion of  whether  literature  will  remain  the  same  after 
the  war.  H.  G.  Wells  confesses  that  the  effect  of 
the  war  upon  him  has  been  to  make  the  ante-bellum 
writers  seem  insipid  and  out-of-date.  He  has  mis- 
taken the  mental  numbness  of  shell-shock  for  intel- 
lectual development. 


1 88  ESSAYS   IN   CONSCIOUSNESS 

THE  WEAKNESS  OF  FORCE 

IT  was  the  preparedness  of  Germany  for  war  that 
arrayed  the  world  against  her.  She  was  attacked  not 
because  she  was  weak,  but  because  she  was  power- 
ful. Make  yourself  feared  and  you  will  be  hated. 

The  German  psychology  was  at  fault  in  believing 
that  people  can  be  intimidated  into  submission  by  a 
campaign  of  frightfulness.  Fear  does  not  drive  brave 
men  to  yield,  but  to  resist. 

The  dependencies  of  Great  Britain  that  proved  loy- 
al in  the  day  of  trial  were  tho^e  that  enjoyed  the 
greatest  freedom  of  self-government,  while  Ireland 
and  India,  dominated  by  force,  seized  the  opportunity 
to  start  a  revolution.  People  may  be  forced  into  sub- 
mission, but  not  into  loyalty. 

Mutual  understanding  and  good  will  are  the  only 
permanent  social  foundation.  All  government  found- 
ed on  force  is  destroyed,  sooner  or  later.  The  best 
diplomacy  is  the  diplomacy  of  friendship. 

PREPAREDNESS 

To  prepare  for  war,  and  to  prepare  adequately,  the 
people  must  believe  in,  and  expect,  it,  for  human 
nature  is  so  constituted  that  men  shrink  from  work 
that  they  believe  to  be  useless  or  meaningless.  But 
all  preparation,  however  inadequate,  will  have  its  ef- 
ect  in  leading  to  war  by  suggesting  war.  If  we  pre- 
pare for  war,  talk  war,  think  war,  we  will  have  war. 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 189 

WHAT  THE  WAR  TEACHES 

That  men  are  still  brutes. 

That  racial  hatred  is  stronger  than  Christian  love. 

That  courage  and  sacrifice  without  consciousness 
are  futile. 

That  our  virtues  are  also  our  vices — loyalty,  honor, 
patriotism. 

That  nations  go  to  war  on  a  pretext  and  defend  their 
action  with  an  excuse. 

That  men  sacrifice  themselves  in  war  in  an  effort 
to  sacrifice  somebody  else. 

That  the  suppression  of  free  speech  is  essential  to 
the  successful  prosecution  of  war. 

That  where  his  patriotism  is  concerned,  the  opinion 
of  the  philosopher  is  worth  no  more  than  that  of  the 
peasant. 

That  war  is  murder  and  that  the  cause  of  war  is 
theft,  and  all  the  chivalry  and  bravery  of  mankind 
cannot  make  it  anything  else. 

The  tremendous  victory  possible  by  man  over  na- 
ture if  the  energy  and  ingenuity  that  are  now  worse 
than  lost  in  war  and  in  the  preparation  for  war  could 
be  diverted  to  human  ends. 

That  the  only  crime  of  kings  is  failure.  The  Rus- 
sians and  Germans  stood  by  their  sovereigns  through 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 


pillage  and  murder  and   turned    from    them  —  when 
they  failed.     And  they  call  it  revolution  ! 

That  idealism  cannot  keep  us  from  war.  President 
Wilson,  the  idealist,  was  responsible  for  the  participa- 
tion of  the  United  States  in  the  war,  for  it  was  within 
his  power  to  sway  the  country  either  for  or  against 
war.  He  now  proposes  a  League  of  Nations  to  pre- 
vent war,  but  so  long  as  nations  are  provoked  as  easily, 
and  go  to  war  as  readily,  as  President  Wilson,  there 
will  be  war,  and  no  League  of  Nations  can  prevent  it. 
We  went  to  war  for  nothing  and  got  nothing  out  of  it; 
therefore,  we  are  idealists.  What  we  need  is  less 
idealism  and  more  common-sense. 

1919 

FOR  four  years  the  energy  and  ingenuity  of  the 
human  race  have  been  devoted  to  its  destruction.  The 
armistice  was  signed  last  November,  but  the  murder- 
ing still  goes  on.  Armies  have  degenerated  into  mobs 
of  hungry  men  that  plunder  and  murder  at  random. 
The  nations  are  bankrupt;  the  people  are  starving. 
But  what  else  can  we  expect  from  creatures  that  mur- 
dered their  own  God  and  the  symbol  of  whose  religion 
is  the  instrument  of  torture  upon  which  they  nailed 
him?  Over  this  scene  of  death  and  desolation,  of 
bleaching  bones  and  ruined  cities,  looms  the  cross  and 
on  the  cross  he  hangs,  the  murdered  God  of  murder- 
ers, the  dead  God  of  a  dying  world  ! 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 


DEFINITION  AND  SUGGESTION 

Religion  is  a  mental  narcotic. 

Virtue  is  merely  plain  common-sense. 

Faith  is  the  last  citadel  of  superstition. 

There  is  a  skeleton  in  the  closet  of  life. 

Spiritualism  is  camouflaged  materialism. 

Give  me  facts  and  I  will  not  ask  for  truth. 

The  next  thing  that  needs  reforming  is  God  himself. 

Faith  is  a  mental  blank  where  the  priest  writes  his 
signature. 

''Man  made  God  in  his  own  image,"  and  all  worship 
is  idolatry. 

The  insensible  make  a  virtue  of  the   hardihood  of 
insensibility. 

Hope  is  the  lance  of  daring  youth,  a  staff  the  old 
man  leans  upon. 

You  do  not  have  to  cling  to  the   truth;   the  truth 
will  cling  to  you. 

The  Kingdom  of  Heaven  is   a  despotic   monarchy; 
I  am  a  republican. 


192  ESSAYS   IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

It  is  not  so  much  the  will  to  power  that  counts  as 
the  ability  to  power. 

Advertisement  is  always  a  half-lie  because  it  never 
tells  the  whole  truth. 

When  Passion  enters  the  house  of  Thought,    Prej- 
udice closes  the  door. 

Not  to  fear  is  not  courage,  but  insensibility.  Cour- 
age is  to  fear  and  still  attempt. 

Religion  is  the  poetry   of    the    vulgar — doggerel. 
Poetry  is  the  religion  of  the  artist. 

The  possible  always  happens,  sooner  or  later,   and 
so  long  as  war  is  possible  it  will  happen. 

Christianity  is  bad  art.     Its    "resurrection"    is  an 
anti-climax;  its  "heaven  and  hell,"  supererogation. 

Today  we  celebrate  Independence  Day,  but  the  day 
that  war  conies  to  an  end  will  be  Interdependence  Day. 

If  you  would  appear  odd  or  original,  affect  common  - 
sense,  for  it  is  the  most  uncommon  thing  in  the  world. 

Society  is  the  paradise  of  fools.  The  less  people 
have  in  themselves  the  more  they  seek  for  it  in  other 
people. 

The  only  thing  genuine  about  society  is  its  frivolity. 
People  cau  meet  as  friends  only  on  the  plane  of  in- 
sincerity. 


ESSAYS    IN    CCWSCTOUSNESS  193 

Amateur:  Youth,  the  adventurer — the  zest  of  life, 
the  quest  for  knowledge.  Professional:  monotony 
and  routine. 

Our  love  and  hate  are  equally  fatal.  In  our  love 
for  others  we  are  like  a  child  squeezing  a  kitten  in  its 
clumsy  hands. 

Faith  is  a  woman.  She  is  helpless  and  so  incon- 
sistent that  she  appeals  to  Reason  to  defend  her 
against  Reason. 

As  courage  is  the  virtue  of  the  strong,  so  coward- 
ice is  the  virtue  of  the  weak.  Courage  in  a  rabbit 
would  be  foolish  and  fatal. 

The  definition  of  God  as  love  is  not  a  deduction 
from  experience,  but  it  is  merely  an  expression  of 
man's  own  feeling  and  desire. 

The  negro  in  the  woodpile  of  argument  aud  contro- 
versy is  prejudice.  In  religion,  prejudice  is  called 
faith  and  is  cultivated  as  a  virtue. 

Mysticism  is  the  explanation  of  mystery  with  mys- 
tery, or  if  the  subject  itself  be  simple,  it  gives  it  an 
appearance  of  profundity  by  treating  it  obscurely. 

Our  revolutionary  fathers  declared  that  taxation 
without  representation  is  tyranny,  but  taxation  with 
representation  may  be  tyranny,  also,  for  the  minority. 


194  ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS 

When  they  that  fight  for  right  are  defeated,  they 
still  have  their  cause;  but  when  they  that  fight  for 
might  (might  makes  right)  lose,  they  lose  everything. 

When  woman  had  won  her  fight  for  equality  with 
man,  the  first  use  she  made  of  it  was  to  demand  an 
equal  right  to  his  vices,  the  tobacco  and  alcohol  habits. 

It  is  useless  to  speak  of  beauty  to  the  worn  and  wor- 
ried. Beauty  must  be  felt  before  it  can  be  seen,  and 
it  can  only  be  felt  through  joy  and  mental  freedom. 

"Virtue  is  its  own  reward,"  and  anything  else  is  a 
bribe.  In  other  words,  the  reward  must  be  the  nat- 
ural effect  of  a  condition,  and  not  something  foreign 
to  it. 

The  only  immortality  that  man  is  worthy  of  would 
be  preservation  in  alcohol  along  with  other  reptiles 
and  insects,  but  then  one  or  two  specimens  would  be 
enough. 

A  cigar  is  a  swindle.  The  tobacco-smoker  is  a  vic- 
tim of  sensation  without  perception  or  of  a  weak  will. 
He  is  the  fool  of  pleasure.  He  is  a  child  playing 
with  fire. 

Do  not  handicap  your  child  with  another  man's 
name.  Children  named  for  famous  people  serve  only 
as  reminders  of  somebody  else's  life.  A  new  life  de- 
serves a  new  name. 


ESSAYS    IN    CONSCIOUSNESS  1 95 

To  demand  faith  is  to  put  a  premium  upon  igno- 
rance and  superstition,  and  it  is  prima  facie  evidence 
that  the  thing  it  supports  is  false  since  the  truth  is 
able  to  stand  on  its  own  merit. 

The  picture  of  Walt  Whitman  in  his  old  age  print- 
ed as  a  frontispiece  to  his  poems  gives  the  lie  to  every- 
thing he  wrote.  What  he  left  out  of  his  poems,  the 
suffering  and  pathos  of  life,  is  written  in  his  counte- 
nance. 

Life  is  a  choice  of  evils.  The  object  of  argument 
should  not  be  merely  to  point  out  the  evil  of  the  con- 
trary opinion,  which  is  so  easy  to  do,  but  to  show 
in  what  respect  we  believe  it  to  be  a  greater  evil  than 
our  own  opinion. 

Is  it  not  strange  that  in  the  custom  of  treating  a 
friend  the  universally  recognized  treat  should  be  a 
subtle  poison,  more  suitable,  surely,  to  be  given  to  an 
enemy  than  to  a  friend  ?  But  perhaps  it  is  not  so 
strange,  after  all — perhaps  the  joke  is  on  friendship. 

The  idealist  philosopher  makes  man  his  startir.g- 
point  in  philosophy  and  explains  the  world  in  the 
terms  of  idea,  will,  desire,  while  the  realist  or  scien- 
tific philosopher  takes  the  universe  for  his  starting- 
point  and  explains  the  world  in  the  terms  of  matter, 
motion,  evolution. 


196  ESSAYS  IN  CONSCIOUSNESS 

I  may  have  spoken  bitterly,  but  I  have  never  said 
that  without  the  restraint  and  incentive  of  reward 
and  punishment  men  would  all  be  liars,  thieves, 
murderers.  This  most  terrible  indictment  ever 
made  against  the  human  race  is  made  by  unreflect- 
ing Christianity. 

It  is  a  crime  against  humanity  for  a  prospective 
parent  to  do  anything  that  could  possibty  impair  the 
vitality  of  the  life  to  be,  such  as  the  impairment  of 
his  own  health  through  narcotic  indulgence,  for  in- 
stance, for  an  injury  done  to  the  unborn  is  a  crime 
just  as  much  as  an  injury  done  to  the  living. 


NON-CIRCULATING  BOOK 


34309 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


